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mikec11711285
Participating Frequently
February 3, 2017
Question

Setting up Fillable PDF Forms for universal use

  • February 3, 2017
  • 1 reply
  • 1288 views

We would like to implement Fillable PDF Forms created in Adobe Acrobat XI Pro, but the issue we are encountering right off is that each of our test users are having very different problems when they try to fill or save the form. Yes, we have set the form to "Reader Enabled," but it sounds like depending on the test users' internet browser, they each are getting a different result. Some can "Save As" an fill out, some get an error message when they try to save, some fill-out and hit the "Submit" button and the form emails a PDF back to us where others are getting no action when they click that "Submit" button.

My company has a manual of several hundred PDF documents and we need our users to be able to open these documents from our website with the least amount of difficulty possible.

The question is: With so many users accessing our PDFs in so many different ways and different browsers, what can we do to ensure that when the user clicks the document, it opens and works right away for them?

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    1 reply

    try67
    Community Expert
    try67Community Expert
    Community Expert
    February 4, 2017

    Unless you have full control over the setting of their computers, not much. The issue is that many browsers now open PDF files using their own internal PDF plugins, and those plugins tend to do a pretty bad job when it comes to handling form fields and scripts.

    Your users will only get the correct behaivor if they save the files locally and then open them using Adobe Acrobat/Reader. In any other scenario it's likely to go wrong, as you've noticed. But you can't force them to do it, unless you have control over their machines.

    You can also send the PDF files in a zip file, which will force them to save it first before extracting and opening them, but that might be a bit too complicated for inexperienced users...

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