PDF export: Make links within same document functional

Feature requests
,
62

if the thread is about there being an interactive pdf someday in the making – that would be awesome!!!

63

Woohoo, got a proof of concept plugin working! It’s nowhere near ready to release yet, but all the parts that implement the solution I proposed are in place, and it kinda works mostly! :tada:

Posting here in case anyone else who can code Obsidian plugins would like to pick it up and refine it a bit further. I’m not going to have any time to work on it for a couple of weeks.

For clarity: this is not a plugin ready for everyday use. It’s code for developers only which proves that it’s possible :smiley:

8 Likes
64

The Footnote when exported to pdf work amazingly just like what we need, sadly i cant choose the location for the foot note otherwise this would be solved

66

I would be very happy to even see the more simple solution that none of the internal links show up in the pdf as links. I share a lot of material from Obsidian and always copy paste it into another word processor before exporting a pdf from there. That way I don’t get the clunky links, that don’t work anyway. Sometimes I also just want to print it out and don’t want a lot of underlines in the page.

1 Like
67

mlte,

I agree. I wish Obsidian had to option to generate the following (from Wikipedia):

" PDF/A is an ISO-standardized version of the Portable Document Format (PDF) specialized for use in the archiving and long-term preservation of electronic documents. PDF/A differs from PDF by prohibiting features unsuitable for long-term archiving, such as font linking (as opposed to font embedding) and encryption.[1] The ISO requirements for PDF/A file viewers include color management guidelines, support for embedded fonts, and a user interface for reading embedded annotations."

It would be nice to be able to switch between PDF (currently generated by Obsidian) or a PDF/A.

3 Likes
68

I think this feature should be available by default. Currently, it is not possible to seamlessly share your notes to none obsidian users. This issue being one of the main reasons why.
It is also disappointing to see, in my opinion, simple and necessary features not being implemented years after they are first discussed.

1 Like
69

+1 from me. This would be a valuable feature that would let me stay in Markdown for longer without having to convert to Latex as much.

70

I’ve just found the plugin Better Export PDF, tried it and it was able to produce PDFs with working internal links :tada:

[[#Heading links like this]]
[[#Or like this|With custom link text]]

But beware that

### 4.1.2. Obsidian sanitized heading links (like this one)
[[#4 1 2 Obsidian sanitized heading links like this one]] will NOT work

The link has to be identical to the heading
[[#4.1.2. Obsidian sanitized heading links (like this one)]]

Thank you to the dev & contributors! :pray: It seems to be under active development right now (2024-02-21) with a flurry of commits and discussion

6 Likes
71

Just adding +1 here. Now that there is a community plugin that solves the issue this is not a top priority request anymore but it would still be nice to have such a natural and important feature provided within the Obsidian’s default functionality

1 Like
72

+1 Important!

73

I also would love to see this feature! It would make exported PDFs much more functional. That is the primary way I share notes with people.

74

Actually, as @leeroy noted, the plugin Better Export PDF works great for this!

1 Like
75

Hi, for those having trouble exporting from Obsidian to docx using Pandoc, here’s a manual workflow that makes links work for me:

  • Ctrl+P and select Active file: links to markdown (from the link converter plugin)
  • Ctrl+H replace [# with [
  • Ctrl+H replace %20 with -
  • Ctrl+P, search docx and export (using the Pandoc plugin)

Some links might not properly convert: in my case, Faciliter la construction de panneaux solaires did not, among many other headers. Possibly because it was a long header (it was the longest header tested).

Would love a better solution… Please share!

76

A massive +1 from me for this. It is absolutely a must have in the core PDF export feature. All the applications do this straight out of the box. I can’t export mark down to any of those tooling as I use only Obsidian for that now. So having the links working and the PDF TOC created, is a quite key need at present. Thank you for keeping this feature request in focus.