When it comes to PDFs you export from InDesign, you can add a splash of interactivity to make it more engaging.
Maybe creating a resume, a product sheet or an event flyer.
In this tutorial, you'll add links and buttons to an InDesign document that you export as a PDF.
To start, one of the easiest ways to add interactivity to your InDesign document is to add hyperlinks or links.
You can add links to external websites, pages in the current document and more.
Let's suppose you want to add a link to a company website like you see here.
That way users who view the PDF can click to go to the website in their browser.
To add a link to something you can select text, you can select the entire text frame, you can select an image or another object.
Select the text with the Type Tool.
That will make it so that you can format the text with a link style.
To add the link, open the Hyperlinks panel by choosing Window, Interactive, Hyperlinks.
You can see a lot of other types of interactivity in this menu.
Now in the Hyperlinks panel, you could enter a URL or an address here, but because the URL is in the text, and it's selected, click Create new hyperlink down here.
In the dialog box that opens, you can see that the URL is already in there.
In this dialog box, you can set up options like Link To: a File, maybe another PDF, sending an Email, Link To: a Page in this document and more.
If you want to you can change the URL here.
The shared Hyperlink Destination option you see here actually stores the file, the URL, the Email, whatever it is, in the Hyperlinks panel, so you can reuse it.
If the link doesn't work in a PDF, try turning this off first.
If you selected text, a Character Style named Hyperlink is applied to that text automatically.
You can change the style from this menu and even create a New Style right now.
Choose New Character Style...
In the dialog box that opens you can set some formatting that you want to be different from the text styling that's already there.
Then click OK.
You can change the Appearance of the link itself by making a Visible Rectangle or not.
If you want, you can also add alternate text for Accessibility here.
One example of Accessibility is for a screen reader or an assistive device to read this text aloud, so someone knows what it is.
When you're finished, you can click OK, and you've got your first link.
Now to test it out, you can open up a panel called the EPUB Interactivity panel.
So, choose Window, Interactive, EPUB Interactivity Preview to open this panel.
In here, you'll see a preview of the page you're on and you can drag a corner to make the design larger, you can then click to test out the links if you want.
If you want to you can try making other links in the rest of this document like scrolling down to this TABLE OF CONTENTS page for instance, you can select a text box, make a link to another page in the Hyperlinks panel and choose Page to go to another page.
You can also make interactive buttons from almost anything you select in InDesign.
Back on the first page, you'll see this PLACE ORDER text in a rectangle that were grouped together.
To make a button out of it, select that group.
And you'll open the Buttons and Forms panel by choosing Window, Interactive, Buttons and Forms.
Now to make this group a button, click Convert to Button down here at the bottom.
And you can set some options, you can Name the button here to make multiple buttons easier to track later, you can then set an Action.
This is what happens when somebody does something like click or tap the button.
The Event is what a user must do to run that action.
So, On Release or Tap is usually fine.
You can then set the Action by tapping the + here, you can choose from any of the Actions except those labeled EPUB Only.
In this case, choose Go To URL.
And you can enter a web address, so that somebody can go to a web URL.
You can also change a button Appearance when it's clicked or tapped.
For instance, if you select (Click) here, you can then set the Appearance of the button out in the document.
So, try double clicking the button shape to select it.
Now you can change the Fill color in the Properties panel on the right.
If you click back on the normal state, you can show the button state that users should see at the start.
To test out the button, if you go back over to the EPUB Interactivity panel, you need to play or refresh the preview in that panel.
Then you can click to try it out.
The last step once you've added interactivity is to export the PDF so the interactive content works.
With the file saved, choose File, Export...
In the Export dialog box, you want to choose Adobe PDF (Interactive) as the format.
Click Save, and in the Export to Interactive PDF dialog box you can set some options like fitting the page in the viewer, or showing Spreads, even having Page Transitions and more.
Click Export and you've got yourself an interactive PDF.
The next time you need to create a PDF for work, school or fun, try adding some of the interactive content you learned here.
It's a great way to add a splash of interactivity to your PDFs, to make them that much more engaging.
