Exporting PDF from QGIS Print Layout including clickable hyperlinks

Question

I am having difficulties to export a PDF from QGIS 3.4 (having the same issue in 3.12 though) print layout with a clickable hyperlink. Looking at https://docs.qgis.org/2.8/en/docs/user_manual/print_composer/print_composer.html (The label item -> main properties) this should be possible since QGIS 2.8.

Labels can be interpreted as HTML code: check checkbox Render as HTML. You can now insert a URL, a clickable image that links to a web page or something more complex.

I simply want to add a text box below my map including a clickable hyperlink controlled by atlas. I added <a href="link">Click me</a> and set the label box as "Render as HTML". I also tried to achieve this by adding a HTML Frame instead of a text box, but still no luck.

The text/link is not clickable when opening the PDF in Adobe Acrobat or other software. During the export I tried both options: Text export as path and as object. Also I tried to force the export as vector. What am I missing?

This related question was asked before the release of QGIS 2.8 and the accepted answer is outdated as well.

This is how the attributes look like:

Answer 1

Update 2:

As you can notice, only the actual link (URL) of the blue highlighted text actually works as a link; the text before that ("this is a link") does not.

I saved the created QGIS project dummy_atlas together with the polygon-layer as Geopackage for you - than you can try how this works on your computer. Also the pdf-Atlas generated from this project is uploaded as well - find all the files here: https://drive.switch.ch/index.php/s/SDw7YIyjbpxclDs

So as a conclusion (see comments below): this is a link is not clickable, but the part with the url is. Clickable hyperlinks in pdfs seem to be possible in QGIS right now only for the URL-part, not for other texts.

Update 1:

You should be able to use both versions, see screenshot:

Version 1: <a href="[% "link" %]">Click me</a>

Version 2: <a href=[% "link" %]>Cick Me</a><br>

In my case, it works. See the dummy-atlas I exported in pdf here: https://drive.switch.ch/index.php/s/lJp5OlR4pyOoQfs

If you open the pdf in your default pdf-viewer (SumatraPDF in my case), both links work perfectly - not if the pdf is shown in Firefox. Test my pdf and tell if the links work. If not, it means it could be a problem in your pdf-viewer. If it works: are you sure you have set the atlas-configuration correctly (see screenshots):

In my case, the final slash / in the URL created a problem, so I changed the links in the attribute-table from http://www.url.org/ to http://www.url.org

But this seems to be another problem, not connected to your problem.

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Original answer:

The correct syntax is:

<a href="[% "AttributeFieldContainingHyperlink" %]">Click me</a>

You can use the expression editor, available below the text-field to automatically generate the correct syntax, selecting there the field from your layer under fields and values.

You should see your links highlighted (blue, underlined, the typical hyperlink-style) in the print composer.