[Prior to Integration version 168]: If you're having Hook 3.0 problems with Adobe Reader and Adobe Acrobat PDF apps

Discussion & Help
1

In Hook 3.0, we added deep PDF linking to our Adobe Acrobat integration; but it requires Big Sur and a 2021 version of Adobe Acrobat.

If you’re having problems with Hook 3.0 and Adobe Acrobat, it may be that you’re using an old version of Adobe Acrobat (pre 2021), or pre Big Sur macOS. (Adobe changed its AppleScript). Until we release a new integration, which we will soon do, you can try this:

  1. Open Hook’s Preferences (⌘,) window and , click on Scripts tab (at top)

  2. Click on “+” button at bottom left of that tab (it will bring up a Finder-style dialog box)

  3. Select your Adobe Acrobat app, click on “Open” button

  4. Click on the Get Address tab in the Scripts tab

  5. Copy the following script to Get Address editor pane:

     tell application "Adobe Acrobat"
     set currentFilePath to (file alias of active doc)
     POSIX path of currentFilePath    
 end tell

  6. Click save.

The downside of the above is that you lose deep PDF linking with that app. So you’ll want to remove the override once we publish our update to Adobe integration.

Now try Hook in your Adobe app.

Our integration update will cope with the various mixes of macOS and Adobe, providing the best experience available for each combination.

2

I’m on Big Sur (11.2.2), using Acrobat Pro DC which is up to date (2021.001.20149), but Hook 3.0 is not linking to it.

3

thanks for letting us know. I’ve asked our Adobe integration developer to have a look. we are working on it this week.

4

Thanks, Luc!

I’m impressed with other new features of hook 3.

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5

Sorry about the trouble, Tony.

We just updated our script server. Could you please:
(1)Open Hook Preferences window, click on Update
(2)Click the “Check Now” button
(3)The script version should now be 168
(4)Try invoke Hook on Adobe Acrobat again

Let us know if that fixes problem or not.

Thank you

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6

Many thanks, Luc. Linking is now working again. I can’t work out how to do deep linking yet, though.

7

If Hook cannot do the deep linking with Adobe for some reason, then it falls back on document level links.

We retested it with latest versions (adobe and macOS) and it worked on our side. Not sure why there would be friction. The fact that deep links are working on your side means that at least some of Adobe’s AppleScript API is working on your side.

to get a deep link in Adobe , please select text before invoking Hook > Copy Link

8

Thanks. It doesn’t appear to be working for deep links. This is what I did to test:

  • select some text in a PDF, invoke Hook and copy link
  • switch to Keynote, invoke Hook and hook to copied link
  • switch back to Acrobat and navigate to another page in the document, then close it
  • switch back to Keynote, invoke Hook, click on the link to the PDF and click open
  • the PDF opens at the last visible page, not the page with the text that was selected when I created the hook
9

HI Tony, sorry we need to add a note to the Linkable Mac Apps – Hook page:
for skim and PDFpenPro, you can select text and make a deep link with Hook. But that Adobe apps are more restrictive. They do not provide visibility of selection of text. So you need to create an annotation ( highlight or whatever). While that is selected, you can invoke Hook’s Copy Link or Copy Markdown Link. That will yield a deep link.

We’ll also create a Using Hook With Adobe PDF apps page.

You can verify the link by pasting it into a text editor like BBEdit, or a RTF editor and then selecting it and doing ⌘K, it should look something like this:

[GuestMartin2020.pdf](hook://file/vkhOxgOAE?p=bHVjYi9Eb3dubG9hZHM=&n=GuestMartin2020.pdf#src=AR&p=12&x=140.119354248047&y=684.046936035156), where

  • “GuestMartin2020.pdf” is the name of my PDF document,
  • p is the page number, and
  • x/y are the x/y coordinates on that page
  • SRC: is the source so that we can make adjustments on opening the links because Adobe’s coordinates are not necessarily the same as other apps unfortunately.
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10

We’ve updated the deep PDF linking section of the apps page to mention the idiosyncrasies of the Adobe Reader and Adobe Acrobat apps.

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11

Ahah! Yes, that works just grand! Thanks so much.

12

Linking to Acrobat is not working at all for me now.

  • Hook 3.0 (4312) scripts 168
  • Acrobat 2021.001.20149
  • Big Sur 11.2.2
13

Have you overridden the Adobe scripts? We’ve just released Hook 3.1 with the 168.

14

No. (Acrobat doesn’t appear in the scripts list, which seems surprising?).

BUT I was being stupid. I just discovered that with 3.1 I could Hook from the PDF I had open, and thought “Ahah! It’s sorted.” So I opened the file I was working on yesterday and discovered that I couldn’t hook from it. Oh . . . it’s in the Adobe document cloud . . . :man_facepalming:

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