Save as PDF Breaks Relative Links to Other PDFs

[Kevin8237]

If you google something along the lines of:

word 2007 save as pdf relative hyperlinks

There's a bunch of very similar results. My basic scenario is, there's a
bunch of Word documents, they all have links to each other. They all need to
be PDF'ed and stored on a CD in the same folder.

So if I save it as PDF using the Microsoft Addin, the hyperlinks are turned
into LINK\ACTION\URI. When you click that in Adobe Reader, it asks "Security
Warning" "The document is trying to connect to file:///c|/blah blah blah.pdf.
If you trust the site, choose Allow. If you do not trust the site, choose
Block." / Help / Allow / Block.

Errr, what site? I'm trying to open a PDF in the same directory.

The secretaries have the fancy Adobe plugin to save files as PDF. And
theirs saves it as LINK\ACTION\LAUNCH...but it also saves the full path
rather than a relative one, so that's no better.

My solution was to (if you couldn't guess from terminology) process the PDFs
with iTextSharp to remove any absolute paths, and to convert LINK\ACTION\URI
to LINK\ACTION\GOTOR (LINK\ACTION\GOTOR and LINK\ACTION\LAUNCH both work OK).

So ... the effort on part of Microsoft to implement this would be ... an hour?

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http://www.microsoft.com/office/com...c82110&dg=microsoft.public.word.docmanagement

 

[VC]

I have had a lot of issues with Word to PDF link conversions as well.

I have a couple thousand documents with relative links also. These
docs get converted to PDF and burned to CD as a procedure manual.

Before converting to PDF, I have to always make sure all other
programs, documents, etc. are closed.

The problem I have encountered:

If you have two documents open from two different directories, Word
will use the path to the first document you opened as the "Base
Directory" for any links you have in the second document.
NOTE: My documents are stored in SharePoint, so I don't know if this
is true for docs stored on a network share or stand-alone PC.

This is not quite the same as your "absolute path" issue, but I don't
know if maybe these issues are related?

 

[C Robinson]

I use relative links all the time for procedural manuals and for security reasons they must be pdf'd. I am running Office 2007, Adobe Acrobat Professional 8.1 on Windows 7 (have a system on XP also).

Anyway, I have found that you must install the Adobe Add-in for Word 2007. This add-in appears along the ribbon at the top (not a pull down menu). Anyway once this is installed just create your links as usual in Word (or whatever office program) and use the Adobe button on the 'ribbon' to create your pdf. Relative and absolute links are maintained. I have found this is the only way to maintain the relative links. Using the pulldown menus (File-Print) or (Save as pdf) will not work.

I recently tried updating to Office 2010 but I found that the Adobe add in no longer worked, so I reverted back to Office 2007. I am waiting to see if the newest version of Acrobat X is compatible.

Hope this helps.

 

[VC]

We have been using "Save As --> PDF or XPS", and it has been
maintaining the relative links for us.

One other problem I've encountered with links in Word documents stored
in SharePoint:

The Sharepoint user must have their MS Word "Off-line editing Options"
set to "Web Server".
If they have it set to "Drafts Folder", when they check out a file,
the relative links will point to the user's "..\Documents and Settings
\..." folder. The links will not update when the file is checked back
into SharePoint.

This has been a big problem for us.
We have to constantly remind new users to change this setting in Word
in order to preserve the links.

Has anyone else encountered this problem?

BTW - We use Office 2007, Adobe Acrobat 9 Pro, Windows XP (and 7),
SharePoint WSS 3.0.