Add Link to PDF

A marketing team sends a product brochure PDF to prospects. Every product image looks like it should be clickable but nothing happens when you click on them. The images are visual but there are no actual link annotations attached. A consultant sends a 40-page report with a table of contents. Every chapter heading is formatted like a link, but clicking it does not jump to the chapter. Both documents were exported from Word or InDesign and the visual styling of links was preserved but the actual clickable annotation layer was not.

PDF links are not the same as blue underlined text. They are rectangle-shaped annotation objects embedded in the PDF structure at specific page coordinates. If no annotation was created over a piece of text or an image, it is not clickable regardless of how it looks. This tool creates those annotations directly. Draw a rectangle over any content, enter a URL or a page number, add the link, and the area becomes genuinely clickable in any PDF viewer. Everything runs in the browser. Nothing is uploaded to any server.

How It Works

1. Upload your PDF by dragging it onto the upload area or clicking to browse. The document renders in the link editor canvas with page navigation controls. Browse to the page where you want to add a link before switching to Draw Rectangle mode.
2. Draw the clickable area and set the destination by clicking Draw Rectangle in the toolbar, then clicking and dragging on the PDF canvas to define the clickable region. The rectangle can cover any area: a single word, a full paragraph, an image, a logo, a table of contents entry, or any other content on the page. After drawing, choose the link type: Web URL for external destinations (enter the full URL including https://) or Page Inside for internal navigation (enter the target page number within the same PDF). Click Add Link from Rectangle to confirm. The All Links panel updates to show the current link count. Repeat for additional links on the same or other pages. Use Select and Edit mode to adjust an existing rectangle's position or size if needed.
3. Save and download by clicking Save PDF with Links. The tool writes each link as a URI annotation object embedded at the specified rectangle coordinates in the PDF annotation layer. Download the updated PDF immediately. Each link annotation opens the destination URL in the system browser or navigates to the internal page when clicked in Adobe Reader, Chrome, Firefox, Edge, or any other standard PDF viewer.

Compatibility & Support

Supported Input and Output

• Input: Any standard PDF (text-based, image-based, exported from Word, InDesign, PowerPoint, or any other source)
• Output: PDF with clickable URI annotation objects embedded at the specified page coordinates
• Link type 1: Web URL — opens any https:// or http:// address in the system browser when clicked
• Link type 2: Page Inside — navigates to a specified page number within the same PDF document

What This Tool Does Not Handle

This tool creates new link annotations placed over specified rectangular areas. It does not edit or remove existing link annotations already embedded in the PDF. For extracting all existing links from a PDF, use the Extract URLs from PDF tool. Email address links (mailto:) are not listed as a separate link type; to link to an email address, enter the full mailto:example@email.com format in the Web URL field.

File Size Limits

All processing runs in-browser with no server upload, so no external file size cap applies. PDF link annotations are extremely lightweight objects. Adding dozens of links to a multi-page document adds negligible size to the output file. Very large PDFs may take a moment to render in the canvas but process fully on modern browsers regardless of source file size.

Who Should Use This Tool?

• Students: A student creating a PDF research report can add internal page navigation links from each reference in the bibliography back to the in-text citation, and link each cited URL directly to the source website so the reader can follow every reference without leaving the PDF.
• Freelancers & Designers: A freelance designer delivering a digital portfolio PDF can draw link rectangles over each project thumbnail, pointing each to the live URL of that project so clients can click through to see the work in context without needing a separate link list.
• Office Professionals: A documentation writer who produces PDF user manuals with a table of contents can add internal page navigation links to every chapter entry, turning a flat list into a functional clickable document index that jumps readers directly to the relevant section.
• Developers: A developer who generates PDF API documentation from a tool that produces flat text without link annotations can add clickable links over every endpoint reference and code example URL, making the document genuinely interactive for readers without regenerating the entire PDF from source.

Why This Tool Beats the Alternatives

• No account, email, or signup required at any point.
• No watermarks added to the output PDF.
• No server upload; sensitive documents with confidential URLs or internal navigation stay in the browser throughout.
• Both external URL and internal page navigation in one tool; many free link tools only support external URLs.
• Draw-to-define clickable areas work over images and non-text content; text-selection-only tools cannot link images or diagrams.
• No daily usage limits or paid tier blocking link functionality.

Pro Tips

• For table of contents pages in long PDFs, work from the top entry to the bottom in order. Draw each rectangle, set the destination page, and add each link before moving to the next entry. The All Links panel shows the accumulating count which confirms every entry was added before saving. Verifying the count matches your TOC entry count catches any missed links before the file is downloaded.
• If a PDF was converted from Word and has visible URLs that are not clickable, use the Extract URLs from PDF tool first to get the list of all URLs and their approximate pages. Then use this tool to draw rectangles over each URL text and add the corresponding destination from the extracted list. This is faster than re-exporting the source Word document if the source files are unavailable.
• For image-based links in a product catalog or portfolio PDF, draw the rectangle slightly larger than the image boundaries to account for any white margin around the image. A small amount of overflow ensures the entire visual element is reliably clickable rather than requiring the reader to click precisely on the center of the image.

Upload your PDF, draw rectangles over the areas you want to be clickable, set the URL or page destination, and download a fully interactive PDF in seconds. To audit all existing links already embedded in a PDF before adding new ones, use the Extract URLs from PDF tool to see the complete current link inventory first.