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Participant
June 15, 2025
Question

API Access and Enhancement Suggestions for Auto Add AcroForm Functionality

  • June 15, 2025
  • 2 replies
  • 181 views

I am currently working with Adobe Acrobat's Auto Add AcroForm feature and have encountered some limitations that I'd like to discuss:

1. API Availability Question: Is there any way to programmatically access the Auto Add AcroForm functionality through an Adobe API? I understand this feature currently works only on PDFs without existing form fields through the Acrobat UI. However, I'm looking for a way to integrate this capability into our automated workflow, even if it's available only for specific subscription plans or enterprise licenses.

2. Field Detection Accuracy Issue: I've noticed consistent mapping issues with multi-part fields, particularly with date fields that are visually separated into three components (day/month/year). While the auto-detection successfully identifies and maps the first field component, the subsequent parts are assigned generic names like "undefined_01", "undefined_02", etc.

Could you provide:

Any configuration options or best practices to improve the accuracy of multi-part field detection?
Guidance on whether this is a known limitation with planned improvements?
Recommended workarounds or post-processing techniques to handle these scenarios?
I would greatly appreciate any insights into current capabilities, roadmap plans for these features, or alternative Adobe solutions that might better address these needs.

Thank you for your assistance.

2 replies

Adobe Employee
June 16, 2025

This forum is for the Acrobat Services API. You might be better off posting this to the feedback forum for Acrobat desktop at 

https://acrobat.uservoice.com/

Thom Parker
Community Expert
Community Expert
June 15, 2025

The general answer to all of your questions is No.   Form field detection is notoriously difficult for any type of procedural methodology.  Detection works best when the fields follow some common field formatting conventions, such as a word followed by a colon and then a string of underscores. Or a lined out table with field labels in each box. 

I doubt Adobe will be wasting any time on improving the existing algorithm. And I would be surprised if they were not working on an AI solution right now. 

  

Thom Parker - Software Developer at PDFScriptingUse the Acrobat JavaScript Reference early and often