Is there something I can put into a microsoft source document that will enable Acrobat to automatically find fields when creating a form?

Question

Underlines, underlines with a leading colon, etc work only about 25% of the time. In other words I create PDFs from Microsoft Word, Excel, Power Point and generic scans. I then use the automatic form field creation

to turn the PDF into a fillable form. The automatic field detection on average locates maybe 25% of what I would like to be fillable form fields. I spend hours manually creating form fields. Acrobat uses some logic to

locate fields. If I knew what that was I would build the source documents differently. Live Cycle Designer many years ago worked just fine

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glenm64024464 · Accepted Answer

Dear MVP,Thanks for the reply. I figured it out! I was using an older Print to pdf driver (part of a access macro I use).. When I use the print to pdf driver that gets installed with Acrobat DC the fields are found just like in the on-line tutorial. I was very pleasantly surprised. Yahoo.

gkaiseril · Answer

Have you thought of using a word processor or speared sheet that converts forms created in that application with the control objects (fields) that exports directly to the PDF format?

Apache OpenOffice.org and Libre Office both claim to be able to do that. I have used OpenOffice.org and for list boxes and combo boxes one can even pre-populate the fields and the values will carry over. The best part is that both products only ask for a donation.

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