Hyperlinks to PDF Files Won't Open

Written by Allen Wyatt (last updated October 31, 2020)
This tip applies to Word 97, 2000, 2002, and 2003

In Word documents you can add hyperlinks to other resources. One of the resources you can link to is a PDF file. If you click the correctly formed hyperlink, the PDF file should open in either Adobe Reader or Adobe Acrobat, depending on which one you have installed on your system.

However, you may run into problems, as some versions of Adobe Reader may have a glitch when working with some versions of Word. If you click the hyperlink and the PDF document quickly opens then closes, it may be a sign that there is a glitch. Upgrading to the latest version of Adobe Reader should help correct the problem. (As of this writing, the latest version is 7.0.1.) Visit the Adobe site for the latest version; it's free.

WordTips is your source for cost-effective Microsoft Word training. (Microsoft Word is the most popular word processing software in the world.) This tip (99) applies to Microsoft Word 97, 2000, 2002, and 2003.

Author Bio

Allen Wyatt

With more than 50 non-fiction books and numerous magazine articles to his credit, Allen Wyatt is an internationally recognized author. He is president of Sharon Parq Associates, a computer and publishing services company. Learn more about Allen...

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What is 1 + 4?

2020-11-05 14:31:03

This PDF linked in Word prompts to update to the latest pdf viewer, and routes to the Adobe site. I checked, and he already had the latest version of Acrobat DC. We uninstalled and reinstalled from the page linked in the error message - same version, so I checked the Acrobat Help menu, and there was no newer version.

He still gets the same error message to update.

We have all his PDF defaults set to Adobe (is this wanting us to leave the one on Edge?).

Thoughts? Ideas?

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