How to Bypass the Lightbox for Individual Hyperlinks

Question

This has been asked over email several times, so I'm documenting it here.

Answer 1

Keeping answer below for reference, but this can now be done without coding or manually modify Hyperlinks:

https://ajarproductions.com/blog/2015/09/21/how-to-add-advanced-html-hyperlinking-with-in5/

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If you have the lightbox setting turned on, you can bypass it for individual links and have them open in a new window. To do so, you add a query string to the end of the URL in the Hyperlinks panel within InDesign. E.g.,

Starting Link (with no query string):

http://example.com/mypage.html

With added query string:

http://example.com/mypage.html?lightbox=0
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Starting Link (with existing query string):

http://example.com/mypage.php?ref=adcoupon&id=011

With added query string:

http://example.com/mypage.php?ref=adcoupon&id=011&lightbox=0

Update (v2.6)

More on link control: https://ajarproductions.com/blog/2015/09/21/how-to-add-advanced-html-hyperlinking-with-in5/

Comments

Does &lightbox=1 allow me to do the opposite ? Most of my links shouldn't open in a lightbox, so I would uncheck the Lightbox in the in5 export, but then when I really need it, i would add it manually.

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That's an interesting idea, Franck. However, if you don't turn on the lightbox option, in5 doesn't include the library in the output (to save file size in the output).

If it's just one or two items, you might want to create an MSO with an empty state and a lightbox state. Inside the lightbox state you could have a Web Content Overlay or Embedded HTML.

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Has anyone got a neat script/find and replace recipe to change all links from watch to embed links? This is going to take me forever..

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One of these three links should help:
• https://creativepro.com/batch-change-hyperlinks-across-a-whole-indesign-document/
• https://community.adobe.com/t5/indesign/find-and-replace-in-hyperlink-url/td-p/9886165?page=1
• https://community.adobe.com/t5/indesign/help-writing-script-for-batch-find-and-replace-hyperlink-external-page-destinations/td-p/11438841?page=1