There was a bug documented back in July that is still live. Every time I export a PDF, my links get this weird black box added around them.
Old bug report: https://spectrum.chat/figma/general/pdf-links-with-ugly-borders-how-to-remove-them~46de5a36-2288-48ac-81c1-4dacc1b01f15
How it looks in Figma:
How it exports to Adobe Acrobat:
This happens to me too. Has it been solved?
Note that this is only a problem in Acrobat. If you open this doc in the browser (Chrome, Edge, etc.), you wonât see these outlines. There are a couple of ways to solve this:
While you have the PDF open, click edit PDF, then select link â Add/Edit Web or Doc Link. Double click the link that has a box around it and change the link type from âvisible rectangleâ to âinvisible rectangle.â (Sources: Reddit and Musli)
The TinyImage plugin could not only remove these outlines, but also compress the PDF which is often necessary when exporting from Figma as the native PDF export is uncompressed and often results in huge files.
Finally, Niklas Higi on Twitter shared a way to do this programmatically.
/Link and replace it with /Link /Border [0, 0, 0] everywhere using the find and replace text featureIf youâre comfortable with the terminal, you can also run the following command to accomplish the same thing:
sed 's|/Link|/Link /Border [0 0 0]|' original.pdf > fixed.pdf
None of two free solutions work. Any other ideas (except buying Acrobat)?
You can try some online PDF editors and/or compressors.
Hello Gleb. Could you please expand on the terminal solution, at least 3 easy step what needs to be done. Thanks a lot!
The full command is listed there, you just need to replace input and output pdf with paths to your specific PDF and to where exactly you want to save it if not in the current folder.
Thank you!!! Got it)
Hi hi, very new to terminal!
but i keep getting response : No such file or directory. I have changed the input and output names of the pdf in my command to match what the file name is and the new file name. How do i specify the paths to the file?
this is what I popped into the terminal :
sed âs|/Link| /Link /Border[0 ,0 ,0 ]|â ash.pdf > terminalfix.pdf
@Gleb - Thanks so much for your solution with screenshots using Adobe Pro DC (the paid version of Adobe Reader). I easily removed the boxes around my links!
***Anyone who doesnât have the paid Adobe Pro (just the free Adobe Reader), I was able to sign up for an Adobe Pro 7-day free trial so that I could make these .pdf edits (and then cancelled the trial before being billed).
OMG I got it to work. Ok so here is what I did. (I am on a Mac btw)
Niklas cmd did not work for me because the [0 0 0] had camas in it*
@Mitchell_Malinin great callout about the commas. By removing commas the same process works in TextEdit allowing anyone with fear of Terminal to make the same global change to their PDFâs
I have the same issue⌠Removing the outlines in adobe works, but I usually work with documents that have about 50 linksâŚ
Isnât there a way or some kind of setting in figma that prevents this from happening?
This worked for me. Thanks for sharing
Hi @Mitchell_Malinin @Joel
I donât know anything about Terminal. Iâm not even confident about how to replace your sample text with my file paths. Could you please really spell it out for me? Letâs say my file is named âResume.pdfâ and is in my Downloads folder. What is the EXACT command that I need to enter? THANK YOU!
@David10 m not comfortable with terminal either so I set up the below process using TextEdit.
Removing strokes from invisible links:
¡ Export PDF from Figma as usual.
¡ Open PDF with TextEdit (free app on mac)
¡ Cmd-F to search for â/Linkâ (donât include quotes)
¡ Check box in upper right âreplaceâ
¡ In the replace field paste â/Link /Border [0 0 0]â without quotes.
¡ Click on the âallâ button on the right side.
¡ Click on the âdoneâ button.
¡ Save.
¡ Open file in acrobat to verify it still opens (it should)
¡ All links are now invisible but still present.
Brilliant! This worked. Thank you!!
Hi, in my situation the third way to do this programmatically is working in half. The border around the text disappeared but the picture in my pdf donât want to be display. Do you have any idea why is it?
Is the picture displayed before removing the borders? If not, this is not related to this issue and I would advise you to open a separate topic with your issue or search for other similar ones.
Yes, the picture was displayed before removing the borders. I did a test and open the pdf file in plain text editor (Windows Notepad) and didnât do anything only saved the file and picture also donât display. It looks like a problem of loading a pdf file in Windows Notepad. Do you try this solution on Windows or only Mac?
