Accessibility

Linking up with Acrobat

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Table of Contents

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Created:
01 December 2005
User Level:
Beginner
Products:
Acrobat undefined or later

Excerpted from “Adobe Acrobat 7 for Windows and Macintosh: Visual QuickStart Guide” by Jennifer Alspach

Adobe® Acrobat® 7 lets users go instantly from a particular spot in a document to nearly any other location, whether that location is on the same page, in the same document, in a different document, or even on the World Wide Web. Acrobat provides the tools to create links that give users one-click access to other locations.

Links can lead not only to other locations in PDF documents, but also (like bookmarks) to files created by other applications, to forms, to JavaScript commands, to websites, and to multimedia files such as sound and movie clips.

Links are very easy to create using Acrobat's Link tool. Links can be obvious or hidden within the document, appearing only when the mouse pointer passes over the link.

Link PDF documents

To link one spot in a PDF document to another:

  1. Open the document in which you want to create the link, and go to the page where you want to place the link.

  2. Choose the Link tool from the Advanced Editing toolbar (Figure 1). If the Advanced Editing toolbar is not visible, choose Tools > Advanced Editing > Advanced EditingTools.

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    Figure 1: Choose the Link tool from the toolbar.

  3. Drag a rectangle around the area you want to define as a link. When you release the mouse button, the Create Link dialog box appears (Figure 2). You can move this dialog box out of your way while you're setting the location of the link, but don't close it.

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    Figure 2: Choose Go to a Page View so that you can link to another page within your PDF.

  4. Select the Go to a Page View radio button and then click the Next button. The Create Go to View dialog box appears and the PDF document is live behind the dialog box.

  5. Use the PDF's scrollbars to navigate to the page to which you want to link. You can also zoom in on a specific spot or zoom out using the magnification tools.

  6. Once you have an area on screen that you want to link to, click the Set Link button in the Create Go to View dialog box. Acrobat sets your view back to the page that has the link button.

  7. To test the link, click it with the Hand tool. The linked-to location should appear.

Link to the Internet

Links can connect to locations outside Acrobat, as far as the Internet can reach. If the text of your PDF document contains URLs that you would like to act as links to the Internet, you can convert them to web links.

To link to a website:

  1. Open the document in which you want Web Page button in the Create Link dialog box. to create the link, and go to the page where you want to place the link.

  2. Choose the Link tool from the Advanced Editing toolbar.

  3. Drag a marquee around the area you want to define as a link.

  4. Click the Open a Web Page radio button in the Create Link dialog box (Figure 3).

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    Figure 3: Link to the Web by choosing the Open a Web Page button in the Create Link dialog box.

  5. Click the Next button and the Edit URL dialog box appears. In the Address field, type the URL of the website to which you want to link (Figure 4) and click OK.

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    Figure 4: Center a URL for the link.

Convert multiple URLs to web links

To convert multiple URLs to web links automatically:

  1. Choose Advanced > Links > Create from URLs in Document (Figure 5). The Create Web Links dialog box opens.

    acr7sdcreatelinks_5_int

    Figure 5: Turn all your text URLs into web links.

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