Form Field Data Disappearing When Completed and Saved

Question

I created a form using Excel and Adobe Acrobat Pro. There are two form fields that, when the form is saved (whether it is signed or not), clear of any data. I am attaching the form. The fields that won’t keep responses in them are BIA Region and State. I have looked through the other fields and can’t find a difference between these two fields and other dropdown fields. The only difference I am wondering about is that these two fields have a lot of options in the dropdown, but it doesn’t seem like that should make them not work.

This was flagged by a user, and I’m not sure what program they use to complete the form, but I had the same issue in my own Adobe Acrobat Pro, which is the program I created the form in.

Based on other comments I’ve seen online, I looked at the Page Properties for any actions that might be causing this, but don’t see any. I’ve also seen some comments saying there may still be data in the fields even if they look blank, but I exported the data from multiple test versions of the form and those two fields were blank.

Is there anything I am missing regarding these two fields that is causing them to not retain data entered in them? Is there a way to fix this issue?

Amal Jaiswal · Answer

​Hi @terra_0077, Hope you are doing well, and thanks for reaching out. We are sorry for the trouble you are experiencing. A couple of quick questions to help narrow this down: In the Item List for the BIA Region and State fields (Prepare Form > right-click field > Properties > Options tab), do any of the export values repeat or get left blank?Are these two fields set up as a combo box or a list box, and is "Commit selected value immediately" checked on either one? The most common cause of a dropdown losing its selected value on save, especially in a long list built from an Excel import, is duplicate or missing export values in the Item List. If two items share the same export value (or one was left blank when the list was pasted in), Acrobat can't reliably tell which one was picked, and the value doesn't stick. Since BIA Region and State both likely have long option lists pulled from your Excel source, this is worth checking first: Open Prepare Form, right-click each field, choose Properties, then go to the Options tab.Click through the Item List and check the "Export Value" for each entry (there's a checkbox near the bottom to show export values separately from display names). Look for duplicates or blanks.If you find any, give each item a unique export value and re-test. Let us know how it goes. ~Amal

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