Tried It Tuesday {Embed Links in a PDF on a Mac}

Happy Tuesday that feels like a Monday!  It's time for another week of Tried It Tuesday. :)

I love having an extra long weekend and spent Veteran's Day catching up on so many things.  The day just flew by!  Speaking of Veteran's Day, I love this quote by Abraham Lincoln:

My Tried It:

Embed Links in a PDF on a Mac

I am linking this post to the amazing blogger's TPT tips post by Erica Bohrer here in the hopes that it will reach more people and be even more helpful!

One task I was finishing up yesterday was a freebie nonfiction text activity for the holidays.  I am submitting it for consideration to be included in this year's TpT holiday ebook.  Here is the link to the 3-6 ebook from 2012.  In order to be considered for inclusion in the holiday ebook, my PDF document needed to have embedded links.  If you try searching for a tutorial on this topic, you will see a host of forums and help pleas from Mac users trying to embed links on a PDF.  I thought I would walk you through the steps I took after several hours of reading and trying in case you are looking to do this anytime soon! :)

First, I followed some advice to upload my PDF file to pdfescape.com.

This may work for you, if your documents are less than 10MB, but, unfortunately, mine are not.  I wasn't ready to commit to a premium membership, so my search continued.

Next, I found a tip to open my PDF in Preview instead of Adobe Reader.  

My version of Preview was 6.0 and I needed the older version.  Here is the link to the forum thread in the picture below.  I used the link in the forum to download Preview 5.5.2 provided by user "Bizdata" on August 11, 2012.

I was successful in the end in that I had a PDF with embedded links.  The one problem I still have is I cannot fully "secure" the PDF with Preview and make the links still work.  My bloggy friend, the super talented technology pro, Erin, from I'm Lovin Lit helped me answer this problem.  Basically, I cannot embed links AND have the PDF secure using only PowerPoint and Preview.  It is not possible to have both.  The solution is to purchase Adobe Acrobat Pro or the Adobe Creative Cloud for Educators monthly subscription.  I know what I will be investing in next!
Thanks for reading and I hope this tutorial will save someone hours of research!