How to Turn Your Out-of-Look PDF into Interactive PDF Within 5 Minutes

PDF is the globally used document format for corporate, academic, and personal purposes due to its compatibility with almost all devices and easy sharing. However, PDFs are known for their static look and lack of interactive elements necessary to keep readers engaged. It increases bizarreness when the reader has to read or scroll a lengthy PDF of the same style and tone with no interactive elements. If you are also struggling with this issue, let's make your PDF more interactive and engaging. Therefore, this article explores the three best ways to make an interactive PDF within minutes, including the latest click-based instant solution offered by UPDF.

What is an Interactive PDF?

An interactive PDF is a PDF document that includes different interactive elements instead of just text or plain photos. The common elements that turn a PDF into an interactive PDF include:

• Hyperlinks
• Forms
• Photos
• Videos
• GIFs
• Fillable forms
• Buttons

The purpose of creating an interactive PDF is to create a digital document that is more visually appealing and engaging than traditional PDFs. This way, it encourages readers to interact with the content. For example, hyperlinks can take the reader to external websites or specific sections within the document. Similarly, videos can provide a better understanding of the PDF text.

So, whether it's an e-book, tutorial, presentation, user manual, or any other document type, turning the document into an interactive PDF elevates readability and casts a satisfactory experience.

How to Make an Interactive PDF

Now that we know what interactive PDF is all about and the reasons to create interactive PDFs, let's shift our focus to how to turn your boring PDF into a reader-friendly, engaging, and interactive one. Since plenty of tools and methods are available today to create an interactive PDF, we have shortlisted the three best tools for this job.

1. Use UPDF to Add Links

If you want to make your PDF interactive by adding hyperlinks, then UPDF provides the easiest solution to do so.

UPDF is a powerful PDF editor tool that provides a simple click-based interface to add hyperlinks to the PDF and make it interactive. With UPDF, you can insert a link at any place in the document. It can insert two types of links, i.e., a link to a webpage and a link to a PDF page.

Follow the below steps to learn how to make an interactive PDF by adding links with UPDF:

Step 1. Install and launch UPDF on your Windows or Mac system. Click the "Open File" button to open the PDF file you want to make interactive.

Step 2. Click the "Edit PDF" icon from the left sidebar and then click the "Link" option from the top bar.

Step 3. Select the place where you want to insert the link and then choose between "Link to Web" or "Line to Page".

Step 4. If you have chosen Link to Web, provide the website URL where you want to go. Alternatively, if you have chosen Link to Page, provide the page number where you want to go.

Step 5. Double tap the link to change its style, such as border color, link shape, line thickness, etc.

That's it! This way, you can easily add hyperlinks to your PDF and make it more interactive. Besides links, you can also add or edit images to the PDF. Overall, UPDF click-based approach makes it the best tool to create interactive PDFs by adding links.

2. Use Adobe InDesign

Adobe InDesign is another useful tool to create interactive PDFs. Being a desktop publishing software application, it allows you to add links, interactive buttons, GIFs, videos, and other elements to your PDFs and turn them interactive. However, the major downside of using Adobe InDesign is its complicated user interface.

Follow the below steps to learn how to make an Adobe interactive PDF by inserting links and interactive buttons with Adobe InDesign:

Step 1. Open your PDF file in Adobe InDesign and select the text, image, or object you want to add a link to. Afterward, click Windows > Interactive > Hyperlinks.

Step 2. Enter the webpage's URL if you want to add a webpage as a link and click the "Create new hyperlink" icon from the bottom.

Step 3. In the "New Hyperlink" pop-up window, set the link type (URL, page, or email address) and the link's appearance. Once done, click "OK".

Step 4. To add an interactive button, select the text you want to turn into the button. Afterward, click Windows > Interactive > Buttons and Forms.

Step 5. Under the "Type" section, choose "Button". Click the "+" icon next to the "Action" section to set the button's action, such as go to the URL, go to the next page, etc. Moreover, customize other settings of the button.

This way, a few steps with Adobe InDesign can let you add links and buttons to improve the interactive aspect of your PDF.

3. Use FlippingBook

As the name implies, FlippingBook provides a platform for creating professional digital flipbooks. With an emphasis on interactive digital documents, FlippingBook also provides many ways to turn a PDF into an interactive piece, such as adding links, images, GIFs, videos, etc.

Follow the below steps to learn how to make an interactive PDF by adding links with FlippingBook:

Step 1. Open your PDF file in FlippingBook and go to the page where you want to insert the link.

Step 2. Click the "Content Editor" option from the top bar.

Step 3. In the pop-up window, select "Link" from the left sidebar. A green rectangle box will appear on the PDF page. Drag it where you want to insert the link and also adjust its size.

Step 4. In the "Link Settings", select whether you want to insert the page or URL link and then customize the details accordingly. Once done, close the window.

This way, you can easily add a link to a URL or a page to your PDF. Similarly, you can use FlippingBook to add other interactive elements to the PDF.

How to Present Interactive PDF Like a Slideshow

Creating an interactive PDF is one thing, but presenting the PDF like a PowerPoint slideshow takes the game to a new level. This is what UPDF promises, empowering you to present an interactive PDF like a slideshow. Try it out for free by clicking the download button below.

UPDF includes a built-in slideshow feature that allows you to play the PDF as a presentation. It converts each PDF page into a slide and presents them in a slideshow. Follow the below steps to learn how to present interactive PDF like a slideshow with UPDF:

Step 1. Open the interactive PDF in UPDF.

Step 2. Click the "Slide Show" icon from the top menu and choose between "Play from Start" and "Play from Current Slide".

Step 3. Once the slideshow begins, show the arrow keys to move to the next slides.

This way, you can easily present an interactive PDF as a slideshow with just two clicks with UPDF. So, imagine you can create an interactive PDF and also present it like a slideshow through one single, powerful platform, the UPDF.

The best part is that UPDF has a lot more to offer. It is an AI-integrated complete PDF editor tool, so you also get to access below features:

• UPDF AI: It provides a ChatGPT-powered AI assistant to chat with PDFs for asking document-related questions, summarizing, translating, explaining, rewriting, ideating, and doing more.
• Edit: It can directly edit PDF text, images, links, and more.
• Annotate: It can highlight, underline, add comments, insert stickers/stamps, draw signs, add text boxes, and more.
• Organize: It can split, extract, rotate, crop, delete, and do other customizations with PDF pages.
• OCR: It can accurately turn the scanned PDF into an editable and searchable format.
• Convert: It can convert PDFs into Word, PowerPoint, Excel, text, image, and other formats.
• Compress: It can reduce the size of PDFs without compromising quality.

To sum up, UPDF is the most powerful and feature-rich PDF editor tool, making it a must-have tool in our PCs to fulfill all our PDF-related needs.

Extended Reading: What is the Difference between PDF and Interactive PDF?

A standard PDF and an interactive PDF can include the same content, but the way they interact with the reader differs. A standard PDF is a static document that contains fixed text, less-graphical images, and specific formatting. In contrast, an interactive PDF incorporates elements that increase the level of engagement and interactivity, such as hyperlinks, images, GIFs, videos, fillable forms, buttons, and similar others.

A standard PDF is suited when the purpose is to print the PDF. In contrast, the interactive PDF is suited for digitally sharing the file with others. In short, a regular PDF is just a simple digital document version, while an interactive PDF provides a more visually appealing and engaging experience.

Conclusion

For PDFs that are lengthy or present complex concepts, making them interactive increases the reader's focus and eases the understanding process. With the smart use of hyperlinks, buttons, images, videos, and other interactive elements, you can turn a standard PDF into a visually appealing and engaging one. Above, we have discussed the 3 best tools to create an interactive PDF. However, UPDF seems the best choice overall due to its extensive PDF-related features. With its click-based approach to add links/images, AI assistant to chat with PDFs, and other PDF editing features, UPDF is an all-in-one tool to create interactive PDFs and customize the content intuitively. Download it and have a try now!