Create active PDF links using novaPDF Professional

Summary:
This tutorial shows how to create active PDF links using the Professional edition. novaPDF is a PDF creator that allows generating PDF files from any Windows application that supports printing. If you don't have novaPDF installed, use the Download page to download and install it.


Details:
Any visible text that starts with "http://", "www", "mailto:", "ftp://" or "file://" in your original document can be converted to clickable PDF links if you choose so (hidden links and internal links are not converted). This option is available only in the novaPDF Professional edition.

Enabling active PDF link conversion

Enabling the conversion of text that starts with "http://", "www", "mailto:", "ftp://" or "file://" in your original document to clickable active PDF links can be done by following these steps:

• Go to Start->Settings and open Printers and Faxes (or go to Start->Run type control printers and press ok)
• Right-click on novaPDF Pro and select Printing Preferences
• In the novaPDF Printing Preferences window click on the Links tab.
• Enable link detection by checking the Automatically detect URLs in text option. If you have in the original document links to local files, those can be detected and converted too by enabling the Detect file names and convert them to PDF links (is recommended to select the Check if file exists before linking option, so you'll be sure the link is valid).
• Optionally you can also configure there how you wish to show the links in the PDF file (border type, style, width, color and font color). Press OK and your preferences will be saved. Further created PDF files will include PDF links (if available in the correct format in the original document

Example of text that gets converted to active PDF links

If the documents that you print to novaPDF printer contains some text in an URL format (like http://www....), it will be shown in the PDF as a hyperlink. Here are some examples of links that novaPDF recognizes and inserts them as hyperlinks in the PDF file:
  « ftp://ftp.backup4all.com
  « http://www.backup4all.com
  « https://www.backup4all.com
  « www.backup4all.com
  « mailto:info@novapdf.com
  « info@novapdf.com
  « file://features/novapdf.doc
  « \\server\features\novapdf.doc
  « c:\Description\novaPDF_Professional.doc

novaPDF will not convert "hidden links" to PDF links (example: if you have in MS Word a Click Here text that is actually a hyperlink to a web page, then that text will not be clickable in the resulting PDF file). Image below shows an example of text that can be converted to clickable links and hidden links that cannot be converted:

Internal links (hidden links) from a document cannot be converted to active PDF links, because novaPDF "sees" exactly what the application sends to it for printing. Unfortunately, when a program sends information for printing to novaPDF, the internal links (hidden links) are not sent. It's just like trying to click on a link from a printed piece of paper. In order to recognize internal links (hidden links) and convert them to active PDF links (clickable) there should be application plug-ins for Word, Excel, ... (a separate plug-in for each application) which would send this information to novaPDF. Because we wanted novaPDF to be as general as possible (and not application dependent) we choose not to implement such plug-ins for the time being.