PDF - mailto - does not work

[LarsLyhne]

Hi my fellow propellars

I have included a mailto link for user feedback in the printed version (pdf) of my manual.

It is generated without warnings, and yet the pdf only returns the following:

Adobe Reader: Could not open the file 'mailto:technicalwriter@company.nu'

The underlying code looks like this:

<p><a href="mailto:technicalwriter@company.nu">technicalwriter@company.nu</a></p>

It has - as far as I can see - something to do with Adobe's interpretation to do. For the record, I have tried exactely the same with a Word document. No troubles at all.

Any pointers?

[lacastle]

How did you insert the mailto reference? via the Insert > Hyperlink dialog?

does this topic help at all? (look at the code that Craig.Prichard included) http://forums.madcapsoftware.com/viewto ... =6&t=13558

[aforsyth]

No - this looks to be a major issue with Flare-generated PDFs recently, possibly due to an Adobe Reader update. We just noticed it yesterday while checking our PDF output from Flare.
Symptoms:
- 'mailto' links in Flare produce the popup error mentioned by Lars, plain text 'name@company.com' addresses are changed by Adobe PDF Reader into working email links, but are not coloured differently.
- standard 'http' web links work as expected in Adobe Reader.
- other PDF plugins behave differently - the inline PDF plugin in my Chrome browser continues to work fine with email links, but the PDF Adobe plugin for Firefox does not work (same as Adobe Reader app).
- We are sure that the last time we checked the generated PDF files in Adobe Reader (mid Dec), all email and web links worked fine.

We use snippets for our email links, so we are probably faced with using snippet conditions to use a 'mailto' link for the addresses in WebHelp targets, and regular text format for the addresses in PDF targets.
It's pretty stupid, though -- it means that invalid email addresses formatted as regular text (e.g. examples using 'name@mycompany.com') are automatically turned into links in PDF Reader. It might be possible to find a workaround for that, but it seems to me this is an Adobe Reader X issue.

Anyone else notice this, and/or have any solutions or workarounds? Should we open it as a Flare "issue"?

Thanks,
Alan

Hi my fellow propellars

I have included a mailto link for user feedback in the printed version (pdf) of my manual.

It is generated without warnings, and yet the pdf only returns the following:

Adobe Reader: Could not open the file 'mailto:technicalwriter@company.nu'

The underlying code looks like this:

<p><a href="mailto:technicalwriter@company.nu">technicalwriter@company.nu</a></p>

It has - as far as I can see - something to do with Adobe's interpretation to do. For the record, I have tried exactely the same with a Word document. No troubles at all.

Any pointers?

[ajturnersurrey]

I am experiencing the same things:

mailto: links are reported as Abobe "Could not open..."
web links fine.

I think Adobe has changed something MadCap need to catch up with

[LarsLyhne]

Sorry for my rather slow reply.
I created the mailto-link via the "Insert hyperlink" (highlight + r-click + Insert Hyperlink)
And no: It still doesn't work.
/L

[nickatwork]

I can confirm that this does work for me. I have email addresses in plenty of PDFs that I send out, these all work and launch the email client on my machine correctly.

The code is:

<a href="mailto:emailaddress@company.com"><span class="Hyperlink">emailaddress@company.com</span></a>

obviously you dont need the span if you dont want it.

[LarsLyhne]

@ Nick and the rest of you.

I tried you way, Nick. In vain, unfortunately.
So, for me the problem persists.
Regards

[LarsLyhne]

@ lacastle: The code, Craig Prichard wrote is way too complicated for me. Also, I cannot see any hyperlink in it.
Finally, even if I was able to understand it, I wouldn't know where to insert it.
Still stuck in square one ...

[wbrisett]

I just looked and mine are working correctly. I did mine by setting a hyperlink in the spot I wanted my mailto: to appear.

2012-04-18 16-28-50.png

I just regenerated one of my documents and it worked correctly.

[nickatwork]

I'd start looking at the version of acrobat that you have if you are still getting this issue. Maybe try update or rollback a version or 2 and see if anything changes...