Hi pattyjean,
If you're hyperlinking to documents, I think you'll find the hyperlinks will have the full filepaths, including drive letters, etc for the target files. So, when you do your PDF conversion, that's what'll be replicated in the PDF. If you then copy the files to a USB stick or CD and open them on another computer, the hyperlinks will still be looking for the original filepaths on your computer and, in all likelihood, will fail.
As for the "list of evidence with the list of hyperlinks and their friendly names", that suggests some form of table, but it's not clear how the 'list of evidence' entries are to be compiled and matched with the hyperlinks. Also, it seems to me you don't need both the 'hyperlinks and their friendly names'. Rather, you should be able to have the hyperlinks displaying only their friendly names.
Cheers
Paul Edstein
[MS MVP - Word]