Support

I assume that you're trying to create a menu item to a PDF file by entering the PDF file's URL. You can access the PDF if you enter the exact same (to the very last letter) URL directly in your browser. If this description is accurate then no, this does not come from Admin Tools. In fact, the URL Joomla uses in the HTML when displaying the menu is the target URL you entered, the one you claim works.

What really happened: you mistyped the URL in your menu item.

Please remember that file names are case sensitive, e.g. https://www.example.com/images/foo.pdf, https://www.example.com/images/foo.PDF, https://www.example.com/images/FOO.pdf and https://www.example.com/Images/Foo.PDF are four different URLs pointing to four different files.

What I am telling you is that Joomla itself does not work the way you think it works.

If you don't believe me create a new Joomla site and create a new and VISIBLE menu item of the URL type pointing it to https://www.google.com with the title Foobar and the alias foobar. Visit your site's frontend and hover your mouse over the link. As you can see the URL is https://www.google.com, it is NOT /foobar.

What you are trying to do requires creating a redirect, not a menu item.

In any case your issue is not caused by our software but your misunderstanding of how Joomla works. Per our ToS we do not provide support for Joomla or other third party software. Therefore I am closing your ticket now.