Overview
Inspect Links is a tool rather than a dialog. While it is active, clicking a link, form field or file attachment shows what it does instead of following it: the page and zoom it goes to, the named destination it uses, the web address, file, script or menu command it runs — and whether its target is missing.
Use it to check a document’s navigation without jumping around the document, and to find links whose destination page, named destination or file no longer exists.
How to use
- Open the PDF whose links you want to check.
- Go to Plug-Ins > Links > Inspect Links. The first time, a short note explains the tool.
- Point at a link: the pointer changes to a pointing hand over anything that can be inspected.
- Click it. A note describes the link’s action. The link itself is not followed.
- When you have finished, choose another tool (for example the Hand tool) to stop inspecting.
What is shown
| Link action | Details reported |
|---|---|
| Go to a page view | Target page (and whether it exists), zoom type and zoom, the destination rectangle, and the named destination when the link uses one. |
| Open a file | The file path, and an error when the file cannot be found. Files on network shares are never probed. |
| Open a web link | The URL. |
| Run a JavaScript | The first 256 characters of the script. |
| Execute a menu item | The menu item’s name. |
Tip
To check every link at once, use Create Link Report, which lists the problems it finds in a text or HTML report.