JolineZ
asked on
Fixing Many Broken Links in PDF Files
Hi!
Any chance anyone here knows if there is a way to redirect links that are inside pdfs?
We have about 150 pdfs, each document has many links to specific pages on a government website. That website underwent a significant redesign. All of our links to that website are now broken.
The PDFs with the links are housed on our server.
Any advice would be so helpful - before I spend the next six months of my life manually editing links!
Yours,
Joline
Any chance anyone here knows if there is a way to redirect links that are inside pdfs?
We have about 150 pdfs, each document has many links to specific pages on a government website. That website underwent a significant redesign. All of our links to that website are now broken.
The PDFs with the links are housed on our server.
Any advice would be so helpful - before I spend the next six months of my life manually editing links!
Yours,
Joline
Tip: For external Websites like this, never use the actual Website.
Instead, redirect all links through your site, so when a site reorganizes, you can change your redirects.
Be sure to use 302s (never, ever, ever 301s), else any changes you make to your redirects will only be seen by new visitors, never old visitors.
301s - Awful for most uses.
Instead, redirect all links through your site, so when a site reorganizes, you can change your redirects.
Be sure to use 302s (never, ever, ever 301s), else any changes you make to your redirects will only be seen by new visitors, never old visitors.
301s - Awful for most uses.
ASKER
FYI - I'm not trying to change the links in the pdfs people have downloaded.
I'm wondering if there is a way to change the links automatically on the pdfs that are on our server - so that people moving forward get the correct links. It sounds like it's probably a long shot though.
Thanks for the heads up about the redirects - I am hoping one day I'll have more authority over the site and I will take your advice!
I'm wondering if there is a way to change the links automatically on the pdfs that are on our server - so that people moving forward get the correct links. It sounds like it's probably a long shot though.
Thanks for the heads up about the redirects - I am hoping one day I'll have more authority over the site and I will take your advice!
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Aside: Be sure you use the 302 trick above, so you only have to do this once, then subsequent changes are made in your Webserver config fil, which is trivial compared with mass search + replace across many .pdf files.
Aside: Many times the search + replace trick can fix this problem, so this might be a trivial fix.
If possible, take the time to post how you finally fixed this problem.
If possible, take the time to post how you finally fixed this problem.
To change the links, you'd have to somehow edit every PDF people have downloaded.