Linking to external documents

[Shlomo Perets]

Ealasaid,

You wrote:

>Here's what I'm looking to create: a Frame book which, when turned into
>a PDF, contains links that open external documents when clicked.
...
>- the links to the external docs need to be relative (ie, of the form
>Procedures/DDOC-00100-001.pdf rather than c:/My
>Documents/Report/Procedures/DDOC-00100-001.pdf) so that I can send a zip
>file containing the .pdf and its associated docs (which are held in
>subfolders) to other people.
>- the external docs are in all sorts of formats -- .pdf, .tif, .doc, etc.

In the Special > Hypertext dialog box, type
message openfile
followed by the file name (or path/filename).

For example:
message openfile name.doc
message openfile path/name.tif
message openfile ../name.pdf

Important: use a forward slash (and not a backslash) when specifying path.

Upon conversion to PDF, these markers will create "Launch File" links.
Unless pointing to PDF files, these links trigger the corresponding 
security alert message (which can be suppressed by clicking the "Do not 
show this message again" box, effective until Acrobat or Reader are restarted).

Note: target PDF will open at the default opening page (typically the first 
page).
(With the FM-to-Acrobat TimeSavers add-on, you can define links/bookmarks 
that control the opening location and the new window property, see 
http://www.microtype.com/ImprovePDF17.html for examples)


Shlomo Perets

MicroType * http://www.microtype.com
FrameMaker training & consulting * FM-to-Acrobat TimeSavers

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