Links in your digital publications are one of the easiest ways to bring your publication to life and make your readers lives a little easier. Keep Trees® allows you to take full advantage of links to other pages within your publication (helpful for your Table of Contents page or Advertiser's Index), websites (a must for satisfying your advertisers) and email addresses.
These links can be easily created in nearly any program you use to created your publication, though we here at Keep Trees® recommend Adobe Acrobat® as an overall solution to refining PDFs created in various programs. However, we recognize that not everyone has access to the Pro version of Acrobat® so our how to also has instructions on creating links in today's most popular desktop publishing solutions, QuarkXPress and Adobe InDesign®. Follow the links below to the program of your choice:
These instructions are for the Pro version of Acrobat®. The free Reader version won't allow you to make changes, however you can find a fully functional trial version of Acrobat® on Adobe's website by clicking here.
Links to Websites and Email Addresses in the Text
Examples: www.keeptrees.com or bark@keeptrees.com within the text of your publication
For links in your text where the actual link is spelled out (not just a "Click Here"), you can have Acrobat® do the heavy lifting for you and automatically create the links.
Under the "Advanced" menu at the top of the screen, got to Document Processing > Create Links from URLs... Choose which pages to have Acrobat® process and click OK. Depending on the size of your publication, this may take just a couple seconds or a few minutes.
And you're done!
Note: Acrobat® is smart enough to create the appropriate "mailto" links for email addresses and find parts of a link that have flowed to the next line of a paragraph.
Manually Linking "Click Here" Text
If your document contains links that aren't spelled out, such as "Click Here" or "Find more information here," you will need to create the links manually.
To do this, highlight the text you wish to make a link out of and right click. Select "Create Link" from the drop down menu.
In the "Create Link" dialog box that opens, be sure to select the "Open a web page" option under "Link Action." We recommend using the "Invisible Rectangle" option for the Link Type as our servers will highlight the links for your viewers. Click Next.
Enter the URL for the website you're linking to in the next pop up window and click OK. You're link has been created!
Note: To create a link to an email address, start your link with "mailto:". Example: mailto:bark@keeptrees.com This tells the viewer's computer to open their email program and compose an email to the linked address.
Links in Images
If you can't select the text you need to make a link out of because it's embedded in an image, you can still create the link, you just need to use the Link Tool.
The link tool can be found under Tools > Advanced Editing > Link Tool.
When you're using the Link Tool, all links in your document will show up with a thin black border around them. This is helpful for identifying what links Acrobat created for you automatically, where you left off if you've lost your place or when you need to edit a link.
To create a new link, click and hold the mouse button while dragging the cursor around the area you would like to make an active link. As soon as you release the mouse button, the "Create Link" dialog box pops open. As in the step above, Manually Linking "Click Here" Text, just be sure to click the option "Open a web page" under Link Action and hit Next.
Internal Links to Other Pages of the Publication
In addition to creating links to external locations (websites, email addresses, etc) you can create links to locations within your publication. This can be useful for Tables of Contents, "Continued on" tag lines, etc.
With the Link Tool, drag a field around the area you want to make an active link. The Create Link dialog pops up again when you release the mouse button. To create the internal link, choose the "Go to a page view" option under Link Action and click Next.
The "Create Go to View" dialog box pops up next. Navigate to the page the link should take your viewers to and click "Set Link." You'll be taken back to the page you just created a link on, but rest assured, the link is now set and active. To test it out, click on the Hand Tool and click on the link. You will be taken to the page you just linked to.
Editing Links
All of the links created in Acrobat®, either automatically or manually, can be edited to correct the clickable area and/or the location the link points to. Select the Link Tool from Tools > Advanced Editing menu. All links will show up with a black border around the clickable area. When you place your cursor over one of the links, you will notice that red "handles" appear around the border of the clickable area. These can be used to resize the link.
Notice in the example shown here, the clickable area for www.keeptrees.com extends over the next word. This can be easily fixed by clicking on the right most handle and dragging it to the left.
To delete a link, click on it once. You will notice that the black border has turned red, this indicated that it is the selected link. Hit Delete on your keyboard and it's gone!
To modify a link and change where it points to, select the link and hit enter or double click it to open the "Link Properties" window. The options on the "Appearance" tab allow you to change how your link shows up to your reader.
To change the destination of your link, click on the "Actions" tab.
Once on the action tab, click the Edit button. This pops open a dialog box where you can type in the correct web address or select a new page to link to.
The instructions were written with InDesign® CS5 in mind but should work with previous versions of InDesign®, at least as far back as CS3. Adobe offers free, fully functioning trial versions on their website, here.
The Hyperlinks Panel
The Hyperlink Panel within InDesign is used to create, control and edit all hyperlinks within your publication. The links won't be active within the InDesign document, however they will become fully functioning links when you export your publication as a PDF. In the export dialog box, there is an option to Include Hyperlinks, but we reccommend saving yourself the hassle of looking for it and use our InDesign Export preset which automagically sets that option as well as a number of others for you. You can find that preset in our How to Export a Perfect Keep Trees® PDF guide.
If your Hyperlinks panel isn't open by default, it can be accessed by clicking on the Window menu at the top of the screen. Hover your cursor over the Interactive option to bring up the flyout menu and click the Hyperlinks option.
You will notice the Hyperlinks panel is divided with a section for Cross-References these can be helpful, but are beyond the scope of this how to. If it's bothering you to see that section, just grab the line above Cross-References and drag it to the bottom of the panel to hide it. You can always access it again by dragging the line up from the bottom of the panel.
Create Links Automatically
InDesign® does an excellent job of detecting links in your text and automatically creating working links during the PDF export process however, it will occasionally miss a link or two. To ensure this doesn't happen, click on the options icon at the top right of the Hyperlinks panel and select the Convert URLs to Hyperlinks... option. In the resulting pop up window, set the Scope to Search: Document and click the Convert All button at the bottom of the screen.
InDesign® quickly searches through the text in your document, creating links found through out your text and adding them to the Hyperlink panel. You will notice that our Hyperlinks panel quickly fills up with links sequentially numbered named as "Hyperlink 1," "Hyperlink 2," etc. You can rename these to keep better track of them without causing issues with the export.
See Editing Links below for more information on renaming these links.
Linking Images
To link an image, first select that image with the Selection Tool (V). With the image selected, click on the options icon at the top right of the Hyperlinks panel and select the New Hyperlink... option from the pop up menu.
In the New Hyperlink window, select the type of link you are trying to create (Keep Trees supports the URL, Email and
Page options, but not the others).
If you select URL as the link type, you will see a field under Destination to enter the URL.
If you select Email as the link type, you will see a field to enter the email address as well as the Subject line.
Note: Leave the Subject Line field blank or the link won't work after uploading to Keep Trees®.
We'll cover the Page option below in the Internal Links to Other Pages of the Publication section.
Links in Images
If you need to create a link from text in a flattened image (such as creating a link in an ad that was submitted as a .tif or .jpg), you will need to "trick" InDesign®.
In the example here on the right, we wanted to create a link to a website over the Canyons of the Ancients text. This text is a part of the image and can't be selected to create a Hyperlink directly.
To do this, create an empty frame (no stroke, no fill) over top of the area you would like to link. You can use the Rectangle, Ellipse or Polygon Frame Tool to do this, just pick the one that covers your link the best. Notice the blue rectangle around the text in the example. This is the empty frame we used to trick InDesign®.
Once the frame has been created, select it with the Selection Tool and create a New Hyperlink as shown above in Linking Images to create a link for the empty frame.
When the document is exported as a PDF and uploaded to Keep Trees®, the frame will be invisible, but the link will remain.
Internal Links to Other Pages of the Publicaton
InDesign offers two ways to create internal links within your publication. Internal links can be used to link directly to another page in the document. This would most commonly be used when creating a table of contents and/or an advertisers index but this feature certainly isn't limited to just those uses.
Using the Table of Contents Feature
The Table of Contents feature in InDesign® is a quick and easy way to create your publications table of contents. And as an added bonus, the entries created for your table of contents will automatically become hyperlinks when exporting your publication as a PDF with the Keep Trees® InDesign® preset.
If you've never used this feature before, it can be found in the Layout menu. Click on Table of Contents... to bring up the window shown here on the right.
As you get more comfortable with this window you can explore all the options here, but for now, the most important elements are the Include Paragraph Styles: and Other Styles: boxes. Select a style from the Other Styles: menu and click the <<Add button to move it to the Include Paragraph Styles: box. (Notice that we have selected our document's Chapter Headers to be included on this Table of Contents.)
Click OK and InDesign® will search your document, create the table of contents for you and load your cursor with the text. Just click in any empty frame to flow the new table of contents text into that frame, complete with page numbers. From there you can style the text however you like and when you're ready to export to PDF and upload to Keep Trees®, these entries will automatically become hyperlinks to the page that text can be found on.
Adobe offers a good reference for Creating a table of contents and a video tutorial that can help you make the most of using the Table of Contents feature.
Manually Creating Links
Manually creating links can be useful for linking jump lines ("Story continued on page 135") and other situations where the automated Table of Contents feature doesn't produce the results you're looking for.
To create a link like this, select the text you wish to make a link and click the New Hyperlink option as shown here. In the New Hyperlink window, set the Link to: to Page. Under Destination, enter the page number this text should be pointing to. Leave Document and Zoom Setting at the default.
Editing Links
To edit a link, click on it in the hyperlinks panel, then click on the options icon. From here, you have several options, the two most useful are listed below.
Rename Links
If you followed the Create Links Automatically instructions you probably have a number of generically named links in your Hyperlinks Panel. You can always click on the link and the field at the top of the panel will show you the URL destination for the link, but to simplify the panel, you can rename these links. With the link highlighted in the panel, click on the Rename Hyperlink... option. Type in the new name for the link in the window that pops up and click OK. This only renames the link in the Hyperlinks panel, it does not affect the links function.
Hyperlink Options
If you've created your links, either automatically or manually, and find that you have some typos or the web address has since changed, you can use the Hyperlink Options to edit the destination of your link.
With your link highlighted in the Hyperlinks panel, click on Hyperlink Options to bring up the Edit Hyperlinks window. This window functions the same way the New Hyperlink window (seen above in Linking Images and Internal Links to Other Pages of the Publication) does. In the Link to: field, select either URL, Email or Page and fill in the appropriate information in the fields under Destination. Click OK and you're done.
These instructions were written with QuarkXPress 9 in mind, but should work with older versions as well. Quark offers a free trial of version 9 on their website, here.
The Hyperlinks Palette
Just like InDesign®'s Hyperlinks Panel, Quark's Hyperlinks Palette is where you can find all the tools you need to create and edit hyperlinks. This palette isn't one of the standard palettes that open by default in Quark, so you will probably need to open it yourself the first time. To find it, click the Window menu at the top of the screen and select Hyperlinks from the drop down menu.
Just like in InDesign®, the links you create within your Quark document won't be active in Quark. However, once you export your document to PDF, these links will be created and the Keep Trees® servers will make them active links in your digital publication.
Create Links Automatically
Unlike the programs above, Quark doesn't contain a feature to automatically create hyperlinks within your publication. You will need to manually create hyperlinks in your document as you work through it. See the next item Manually Creating Hyperlinks for instruction on that.
Exception: Internal links to other pages of your publication can be created automatically if you create a list. See Internal LInks to Other Pages of the Publication to see how it's done.
Manually Creating Hyperlinks
To create Hyperlinks to external destinations (websites, email addresses, etc.) click the New Hyperlink button at the top left of the Hyperlinks Palette. In the New Hyperlink box that pops up, name your link for easier organization and leave the Type: set to URL. In the URL: field enter the URL of the website you want to link to. Quark will assume that you're linking to an http:// site and add that accordingly, however, if you're trying to link to a secure http site (https://) or an email, you will need to "tell" Quark. Click the down arrow on the right side of the URL: field to access the drop menu with your options. The first 4 will be the different protocols you can link to and any other entries after that are links you've already used. Select the one that's appropriate for your use (mailto: is for email addresses) and enter your link. Click OK and your link will be created.
Linking Text
To create a text link, first select the text you want linked. Be careful to select only the text that should be linked, especially if there is a paragraph return at the end of the link text. If the paragraph return is selected, it will cause the link to be applied to subsequent text. Follow the instructions in the paragraph above to add the link. Once you click OK and create the link, you will see that the text now has a thick blue underline. This is Quark's indication that it is a hyperlink and will not appear in the PDF or on Keep Trees® when you upload your publication.
Linking Images
To link an entire image, first select the image then click the New Hyperlink button and create the link the same way you would if you were linking text. Once you click OK, a small icon (looks like two chain links) will appear at top right corner of the image. This is Quark's indication that the image is linked and won't appear in a print or a PDF.
Links in Images
In order to create a link in an image, such as the Canyons of the Ancients text on the sign in the example on the right, you need to first create a box over top of the text. Make sure there is no fill color or border for this box unless you want it to appear that way to viewers.
Once you have the box created, select it and click on the New Hyperlink button in the Hyperlinks Palette. Enter the name for your link and the URL and click OK.
Once you export your PDF, there will be a hyperlink over this portion of the image.
Internal Links to Other Pages of the Publication
Quark allows you to link to other internal pages in one of two ways. You can use the Lists feature to generate an automated Table of Contents or you can manually create links individually. Both methods result in a functioning link once your PDF is uploaded to Keep Trees (as long as you use the Keep Trees® Quark preset.
Using the Lists Feature
The Lists feature in Quark is an easy way to create a table of contents or an advertiser's index for you publication with the added bonus that the resulting entries will be hyperlinked in your PDF export and upload to Keep Trees®.
If you've never used this feature before, you will need to create one before you can use it. Click on the Edit menu and select Lists... (about halfway down the menu). Click on New to create your new list.
In the Edit List dialog box that pops up, click on a paragraph style in the Available Styles: box and click the top arrow to add it to the Styles in List: area. Click OK to exit the Edit List box when you're done and be sure to Save your changes before closing the Lists for [your publication name].qxp.
Now open your Lists Palette. You can find it under the Window menu.
In your Lists Palette, you will see a list of all the links that will be created at the bottom. (If you see one missing, it is most likely not styled properly and that's why the List generator isn't catching it.) Click in an empty text box and then click the Build button in your Lists Palette. Quark will fill the text box with your list and when you're ready to export to PDF, this list will export with active hyperlinks to each page.
Manually Creating Links
To manually create links to other pages, first select the text or image frame you want to link. Then click the New Hyperlink button in the Hyperlink Palette.
Set the Type: to Page in the drop down menu. Once Page is selected as your Type, the bottom drop down allows you to select a page number to link to. Name you link so it's easy to differentiate in the Hyperlinks palette and click OK. This link will now be active when you export to PDF and upon upload to Keep Trees®.
Editting Links
To edit a link, right click on it in the Hyperlinks Panel and select Edit... from the menu. A dialog box pops up allowing you to change the name and destination (url, page number) of your link. However,
you won't be able to change the type of link. If you need to change the type of link, you should delete the old one and create a new link of the appropriate type.
The Keep Trees® Link Tool is now in open beta testing and available to all users. This tool will allow you to create new links within your publication without the need to upload updated pages. The tool can't be used to edit links that were originally included in your uploaded PDF, but you can place a new link over top of an original link to supersede it.
Access the Links Tool
You can access the Link Tool from your publications dashboard. Just click on the icon (shown here on the right) to get started.
After you click on the tool, a notice will pop up stating that the tool is in Beta development. Click OK to proceed to the tool.
Create a Link
Step One
Using the drop down menu, select the page you would like to add a link to.
Step Two
With the Create Link Tool selected (this is the default tool), click and drag to draw a box around the area you wish to create a link for.
Step Three
Click on the box you just created. A new field will be shown at the top right of the screen (just under the "2" in the green circle). Use this field to type in your link destination and click the Set button.
After you click Set, the field will turn black to indicate that the change has been made and a Next button will appear above. Click Next to test your link in a the Keep Trees® environment.
Step Four
In the player environment you will be able to test your link before committing the changes to your live publication. Click the link you created to verify the destination brings you to the correct place. If it does, click the Commit Changes button in the top left to write the link to your publication. If it doesn't work correctly, click the Back to Editor button to change your link destination and retest it.
Edit a Link
To edit a link you've previously created with the link tool, open the link tool and navigate to that page. Then click on the link. In the destination field for the link (in the upper right portion of the screen), type in the new destination for the link and click the Set button. Test your changes the same way you did when creating the link and commit the changes to your live publication when you're satisfied.
Please Note: The Link Tool can not modify links that were originally created from your uploaded PDF. You can, however, cover them up (see next section).
"Cover Up" Original Links
While you can't edit links from your original PDF with the Link Tool, you can cover them up. The new link will be placed over top of old link once it is written to your live publication. Just be sure to draw the box for the new link so that it entirely covers up the old link. Otherwise, if a portion of the old link isn't covered, it may still be clicked on and followed to a non-working destination.
Delete a Link
To delete a link you've created with the Link Tool, open the Link Tool from your dashboard and navigate to that page. Click on the Delete Link Tool (the red circle with white "X" near the top right of the window) and then click on the link. The link will disappear and the Next button at the top of the screen will show up. Click Next to test the page in the Keep Trees® player. Click on Commit Changes when you're satisfied the link has been deleted and the change will be made to your live publication.
Please Note: Currently, the Link Tool can not delete a link created from your original PDF. To delete a link from your original PDF, please upload a new 1-page PDF (without the link) to replace that page.
Still not sure? We're here to help! Email us at: bark@keeptrees.com
