Thursday, June 4, 2009

Technical (Indesign) – Advanced Email Links in Interactive PDF

Wonder how to create a link in interactive PDF that will open a new message window of the user’s mail client? And probably with recipient and subject line fields filled with specific details?
Here is the step-by-step trick:
  1. Go to Window>Interactive>Hyperlinks and bring up the Hyperlinks palette.
  2. Highlight the email address that you want to create a link on, click on the palette right facing arrow and create New Hyperlink.
  3. In the New Hyperlink window, leave the Name same as the email address you highlighted, select Type as URL and fill up URL as follows:mailto:email address, email address
    (You can put a few here, and use Commas without space to separate them)
    For example:
    mailto:jackkwan@iinet.net.au,jackkwan@hotmail.com

    If you want to add recipients to carbon copy (cc) and/or blind carbon copy (bcc) the emails to:
    mailto:email address?ccemail address=&bcc=email address
    For example:
    mailto:jackkwan@iinet.net.au?cc=jack.kwan@fitnessfirst.com.au&bcc=jackkwan@hotmail.com

    And if you want to add a subject line:
    mailto:email address?subject=subject line
    For example:
    mailto:jackkwan@iinet.net.au?subject=RE: you think you can mac operate blog

    Now if you combine all the variables together:
    mailto:email address?cc=email address&bcc=email address&subject=subject line
    For example:
    mailto:jackkwan@iinet.net.au?cc=jack.kwan@fitnessfirst.com.au&bcc=jackkwan@hotmail.com&subject=RE: you think you can mac operate blog

    Click Okay and now you create a hyperlink. You can test the link by click the thick right arrow at the bottom of the Hyperlink palette. You can mix and match the combination above but make sure the syntax is right.
  4. When you export your Indesign document to PDF, remember to check the Hyperlinks box under General option.
And remember, always check the links in your exported PDF to ensure that they work the way as you desire .

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