Retain Hyperlinks on Shapes Saved to PDF
- Add a shape to a PowerPoint 2011 or 2016 slide.
- Add a hyperlink to the shape.
- Save the file as PDF and open in Reader. The hyperlink is gone.
This works as expected in the Windows versions of PowerPoint, please fix!

9 comments
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Anonymous commented
I've the same issue for months but then today I proceeded as follows:
1. I saved the PowerPoint pptx file to my Google Drive
2. Open with > Google Slides3. In Google Slides click > File > Print settings and preview
4. In Preview select the relevant options at the top
5. Take a good look at your slides as displayed under the selected options i.e. check for things like, the font size or that some of the figures or images are clearly displayed etc. and if you are happy with what you see
6. Click > Download PDF and Save to relevant folder.
Note: A Warning message will show at the top reading “Some PowerPoint features can’t be displayed in Google Slides and will be lost if you make changes”. I chose to ignore the warning message, but the result was what I wanted; meaning I was able to successfully export the hyperlinks to the downloaded PDF. -
[Deleted User] commented
How is this not already a thing?
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Anonymous commented
Very annoying! With pretty much the entire country teaching remotely right now, we need this program to function properly.
I'm trying to create bitmoji classrooms with clickable links (along with thousands of other teachers) for my students. Being able to link a picture to a book, a website, an assignment, and more, is an important feature that helps us deliver prepared content to our students.
Please fix this.
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Danielle commented
Sadly, I have to go to Adobe Acrobat Pro to add my hyperlinks after conversion to PDF. OR, Apple's keynote, which kind of sucks.
I get the feeling that this fix is never gonna happen. My would Microsoft do anything to help Apple users? Although they should since we're specifically choosing to use Powerpoint over Keynote.
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Su commented
This is such an important feature, specially when you have to navigate a presentation that's more than 100 pages. It's available to Windows users but not for Mac. They need to fix this ASAP. Microsoft needs to deliver on this issue like they say they have done before, but the problem with the internal links and external links disappearing when converting to PDF persists.
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Anonymous commented
After several years of Microsoft's trumpeting about feature parity between Windows and Mac, isn't it about time to deliver on that promise when it comes to PDF? Please?
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Anonymous commented
This issue is still not resolved. I'm running the latest version of Powerpoint via Office 365 on a Mac running the latest OS X 10.15.3 (Catalina). I shouldn't have to open a PPT in Keynote just to export a working PDF!
This really should be treated as a bug and not a feature request!
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Laurent Breillat commented
According to this post, it's supposed to be fixed :
https://powerpoint.uservoice.com/forums/288925-powerpoint-for-mac/suggestions/12337200-add-hyperlink-support-for-pdfs-made-from-powerpoinBut I have the latest update installed, and I can confirm THIS IS NOT FIXED.
Hyperlinks on shapes don't work at all. They do work on text now (after 5 years of the whole internet complaining), but it's impossible to get rid of the underline on a link, because, drumroll please... the solution in Office support is to create a shape !
Please fix this ! It should be very simple.
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John Korchok commented
Users have to choose between keeping hyperlinks or keeping fonts in a PDF saved from PowerPoint. This choice is unacceptable, the PDF save needs to retain both. Windows users don't have to make this choice.