Turning off Hyperlinks

[JarrahP]

Hello,

I'm currently working with a big PDF of an electrical drawing set that was generated with Eplan, as such many of the blocks are clickable hyperlinks (for example sensors that when clicked on take you to the sensor in a bill of materials) While this is useful and I don't want to just delete them, it gets annoying when making PDF markups because you end up clicking links instead of inserting text boxes.

Is there a way to disable hyperlinks temporarily so you can make markups as normal?

Thanks

[Stefan - PDF-XChange]

Hello JarrahP,

You can turn on Exclusive mode for a specific tool. Have the tool selected and then go to the Format Tab where you can toggle that option on or off:

image.png

If you want to - you can also use the Shift Key to temporarily toggle this same exclusive mode.

Kind regards,
Stefan

[JarrahP]

Hi Stefan

Thanks for responding, that partially solves my issue. I knew about exclusive mode and it enables me to create markups however if I (for example) create a text box over a hyperlink and then try and edit the text box I still end up clicking the link even though I am in exclusive mode, any solution for this?

[Stefan - PDF-XChange]

Hello JarrahP,

Hyperlinks are with the highest priority.
Can you please share with me a sample of a file where you need such a combination of a text box and hyperlink at the same coordinates?
Maybe you can "flatten" the textbox once you create it - so that it does behind the link? Or do you anticipate to need to change that text box frequently?

Kind regards,
Stefan

[JarrahP]

Yes I want to be able to change the textbox ontop of a hyperlink without clicking on the hyperlink, Can't share a sample sorry as it is a clients drawing set.

[PHK]

It seems to me that the User cannot associate Links with Layers the way one can associate Comments with Layers. If that were true for Links as well as Comments, then the user could put the Links in a specific Layer and then be able to toggle the visibility of the Links and make them invisible so that OP could do as outlined.

Could this possibly be a future development?

[Sean - PDF-XChange]

I will ask the developers today if this is something that we might be able to implement - it's a good idea and would certainly resolve the issue that the OP was experiencing, but it may be restricted by the ISO PDF Specification.

Best regards,

[Sean - PDF-XChange]

Yes I want to be able to change the textbox ontop of a hyperlink without clicking on the hyperlink, Can't share a sample sorry as it is a clients drawing set.

Could you please clarify how you would like to change the textbox? We may be able to come up with a workaround that will enable you to do this if you can provide a little more information.

Best regards,

[LSELT]

Hello Sean,

i have the same problem as JarrahP. The problem with EPLAN is, that most of the space on a page has a hidden hyperlink.
So this problem is with all annotations, not only with text boxes.
When editing anotations i mostly use the marked tool:

grafik.png

So far you can´t turn on "exclusive mode" for this tool.
Then you could only select annotations and the hyperlinks are inactive, i suggest.
If this was possible, i think it would be the easiest solution for my problem.
Can you consider this idea ?

Best regards,
Lukas

[Dimitar - PDF-XChange]

Hello Lukas,

Thank you for your suggestion.

I made a Feature Request ticket in our internal ticket system:


#6269: FR: Adding the ability to turn off hyperlinks


I can not make promises as to whether this would be approved or when it could be implemented, as this is up to our devs.

Regards.

[PHK]

It seems to me that the User cannot associate Links with Layers the way one can associate Comments with Layers. If that were true for Links as well as Comments, then the user could put the Links in a specific Layer and then be able to toggle the visibility of the Links and make them invisible so that OP could do as outlined.

Could this possibly be a future development?

Thanks for implementing this in Build 365; much appreciated.

[PHK]

Hello Lukas,

Thank you for your suggestion.

I made a Feature Request ticket in our internal ticket system:


#6269: FR: Adding the ability to turn off hyperlinks


I can not make promises as to whether this would be approved or when it could be implemented, as this is up to our devs.

Regards.

Thank you for implementing this Feature Request in Build 365.

[Paul - PDF-XChange]

[JarrahP]

Oh wow that is great news, i have just updated, how I turn them off?

[Stefan - PDF-XChange]

Hello JarrahP,

The above posts were letting you know that the ticket has been created, not that this feature has been actually implemented and added to our products. The ticket is still open. Paul will post again here as soon as he hears from our devs that this has been worked on.

Kind regards,
Stefan

[Paul - PDF-XChange]

Absolutely.
The ticket fore the feature request to be able to turn off links is still new and in progress, we did include in 365 the option to change how links are clicked, it should make it easy to work with other content at the same coordinates if you switch to "CTRL+click" for example:

image.png

[LSELT]

Hello Paul,

i tested this feature in the newest version (9.5 - Build 368.0).
But unfortunately even with this feature selected (Activate Links by Ctrl + Click), the Hyperlinks "hover" above the annotations so you can select or drag them with a single click.

Can you change this behaviour in the future ?

Best regards,
Lukas

[Dimitar - PDF-XChange]

Hello Lukas,

Indeed, completely disabling links will be the most convenient option.

I will ask our developers if this can be done and let you know.

Regards.

[tommac]

Hi, As many other I need to simply disable/enable the "click" function that the link is active or not, to not disturb me changing different parts. It seems to be a very difficult task to create such a simple on/off button, if the issue is known for nearly 6 years now ... Is there any way to increase the priority of this task? I hope for more than 6 years now, that there is a way.... Thank You!

[Daniel - PDF-XChange]

Hello, tommac

Since this discussion happenbed, under the Preferences (Ctrl_K) in the Tools category, we have added a control for how links in documents should be activated:

image.png

I hope this helps!

Kind regards,

[Paul - PDF-XChange]

Hi

and doesn't this work for you to prevent the links being active?

image.png

[Fr33man]

Any news on this?

I've been using PDF-Xchange for years, but this problem has been veeerrrry annoying for years too.

Same situation as the user above with Eplan documents and annotations.

Changing "Click" to "Ctrl+Click" doesn't help much, because as already mentioned above, the hyperlink is on the top level.

Please add an option to temporarily disable the hyperlink level.

Thank you

[Dimitar - PDF-XChange]

Hello Fr33man,

Welcome to our Forum.

Switching to Ctrl+Click should disable the direct clicking on all types of links!

May I ask you to give us one file that indicates this problem?

Regards.

[rakunavi]

Hello Dimitar and Fr33man, sorry for interrupting to comment.

Perhaps everyone is having trouble editing a comment when a link is set up to cover the top of the comment. In that case, Ctrl+Click to activate the link will not solve the problem. The only workaround at this point is to put the link on a separate layer and turn off the layer with the link only when you want to manipulate the comment.

Previously, base content as well as comments were subject to this limitation, but at this time, it seems to have been improved so that it can be edited even if the links overlap.

Here is a verification video for your reference.

1. In the early part of the video, you try to edit a text comment by double-clicking it with the Comment Select Tool, but of course you cannot edit it because it is blocked by a link.
2. In the middle part of the video, the link is changed to Ctrl+Click, and although the link no longer works, the comment continues to be uneditable in the Comment Select Tool.
3. At the end of the video, if the link is set to another layer and the layer is hidden, the link is completely disabled, allowing editing with the comment select tool.

• Animation.gif

• sample.zip

Personally, I find the "Activate Links by" setting in the preferences dialog almost useless. Users would like a solution that allows them to disable links in an instant without having to go through the tedious workaround of making the link belong to a layer and then hide it. We don't want to just disable the link, we want to disable the link because we want to edit the object under the link.

In retrospect, I have made similar comments on this forum.

• viewtopic.php?p=180778#p180778
• viewtopic.php?p=176720#p176720
• viewtopic.php?p=174015#p174015

Best regards,
rakunavi

[Daniel - PDF-XChange]

Hello, rakunavi

Thank you for the clear breakdown. I have raised this with the Dev team, and received confirmation that this will be getting addressed. At the moment I am unsure whether this means making the "ctrl+click" link option allow clickthrough, or if this means adding a toggle button, but they are looking into it, and have seen the posts here.

Kind regards,

[JarrahP]

Thanks for the response and suggestion everyone. For me the solution of adding the links to a layer then turning the layer off works perfectly. It would be nice if there was a simple "turn off links" button or something however.

[Dimitar - PDF-XChange]

Our developers are working on it, so let's hope that you we will have that soon.

Regards.