Known Participant

Answered

CS6 How do you set form font

Forum|Forum|14 years ago
May 9, 2012
9 replies
49945 views

We have a diary type form that needs to be in Helvetica

Just tried to set up in CS6 and can't see where to set the font - text boxes default to times

How do you set the font in Indesign's new PDF form creation tool text boxes?

tia

This topic has been closed for replies.

Correct answer Laubender

"I came here to try to find how to set the font in an interactive form field and all I found was this "useless" drivel."

Did you read the posts above?
Did you try out FormMagic by Bookraft Solutions at id-Extras?

http://www.id-extras.com/products/formmagic

The simple answer is:

You cannot do it with InDesign.

You can do it with Acrobat Pro.

And you can automat some things with FormMagic Pro (not an Adobe product).

Uwe

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Pu Koh

Known Participant

It's 2016. Any developments on this front?

BobLevine

Community Expert

No.

kenneths15580920

Participant

Can someone change the name of this thread to "Two dudes calling each other useless?"

I came here to try to find how to set the font in an interactive form field and all I found was this "useless" drivel.

L

Laubender

Correct answer

Community Expert

"I came here to try to find how to set the font in an interactive form field and all I found was this "useless" drivel."

Did you read the posts above?
Did you try out FormMagic by Bookraft Solutions at id-Extras?

http://www.id-extras.com/products/formmagic

The simple answer is:

You cannot do it with InDesign.

You can do it with Acrobat Pro.

And you can automat some things with FormMagic Pro (not an Adobe product).

Uwe

kenneths15580920

Participant

Laubender‌

Thanks for the reply. I read much of the thread, but eventually didn't think it was going anywhere. I'll have a look at it.

tiredofregistrations

Participant

Seems like this has been going on for years.

It's now 2015 and I have come across the issue.

Surely since 2012 this would have been addressed?

In this case, our document is for internal use only so fonts would not be a problem.

Furthermore, Indesign CC doesn't give you the option of using even Arial, for example.

rae79

Participant

maybe you have to pay for that feature??

Subscription Options | Adobe Acrobat Pro

D

Doug Ridgway

Participant

Let's get constructive!

While it's frustrating that Acrobat is required for changing the form field fonts — here's the workflow that I used in a relatively lengthy document.

Think about the naming of your form fields (name them in a way that lets you know what type styling they should have) this will help you once you're editing in Acrobat.

Export as Interactive
Open in Acrobat
Click on Tools / Forms / Edit
- <list of all the fields drops in below>
You can now shift and cmd select the like fields that you want to change the properties on — just right-click on a selected field and choose 'properties' — you could select all if you only had form fields and wanted one type style.

This brought my editing time down SIGNIFICANTLY, althought it still has to be done for every 'final' export. Hope this helps with the workflow until there's a better solution.

X

XCrash

Participating Frequently

Thanks Doug, that actually is the same workflow we follow.

The problem I (and apparently many others) have, is that when working with a very simple form, being able to set something as basic as the font directly InDesign would eliminate the need for that extra step.

We typically have 30+ documents that need to be updated at a time, so having to edit everything in Acrobat adds a considerable amount of time to the process.

Of course, it would also be helpful if the border color and size that you set on a text field in ID actually carried over to the exported PDF, but I digress.

-Marc

Steve Werner

Community Expert

Perhaps a little bit of history would be instructive.

Before InDesign CS6, you couldn't even create a PDF form in InDesign that would be directly useable in Acrobat. You could create the general look of the form and put squares and circles. You would open it in Acrobat Pro and hope that what you created might partially be translated into form fields.

In its first iteration of PDF forms, InDesign does perhaps 90% of the work. All of a sudden, we want it all. I'm sure, if we're all a little more patient, it will come. Just send feature requests here so the product manager knows your desire.

Adobe - Feature Request/Bug Report Form

A

AnaïsN11601693

Participant

For me, the first answer here gave the most important element of information.

When Bob said "Does it occur to you that perhaps they just didn’t have time to get all of this in?"... Well yes, it sure did occur to me! And my reply to this would be: "What if they had taken a little more time and made sure they'd managed to have a function that is a little more complete before releasing the newer version?".

This has been my main issue with any company that releases products on an (almost) yearly basis: OBVIOUSLY they won't have time to complete everything!

Maybe, I'm only saying maybe, Adobe could have waited a liiiiitle bit longer and provided a finished product. Now of course, people will always have a new feature in mind, or a genius idea that they'd like to see happen in a program.

I also know that the high management would have been pushing for everything to be ready "on time", but then if you know you won't finish it, leave it out!

I was also very much looking forward to the new feature in InDesign as I have to make multiple copies of the same form translated into various languages.

And I had the very same problem as jahallaa, but with our French versions of these PDF forms.

So, yes, having the option to create the form in InDesign is a great for most of it. Fortunately, the font choice for our forms isn't all that important for me, in this specific case, so it wouldn't matter which font is used IF only it would understand accentuated letters properly.

Also, reading several times that "the Acrobat team didn't provide all the codes to the InDesign team" leaves me a little perplexed... If they are not going to get a complete code, then maybe, once more, they should wait until they get the complete thing. Now, of course, I don't know why the code would be provide incomplete, whether it's competition between the teams, security or plain weirdness but still... If you're going to implement a feature, make sure it fills in the major bullet points! If it doesn't, well give the marketing a rest and wait for the next release!

Now after saying all this... When our files are translated, they have to be converted into an IDML file to be compatible with our translation tool. I then have to reimport them into InDesign to finalise them, once translated.

Come to think of it, I'm pretty sure they will lose the forms function in the process, seen that this function didn't exist in CS 5 or 5.5 and that the IDML file loses any function that is not downcompatible.

Dammit!! I'll now have to fiddle around with 2 files and import layers and such...

Ah well... Sorry, rant's over!

Little Red Frog

X

XCrash

Participating Frequently

I've previously used Acrobat to create and edit forms, and I'm working with forms in InDesign CC for the first time.

All was going well until I realized there was no way to specify the default font for text boxes. In fact, I assumed this lack of functionality was actually a bug.

In my search for a way to do this in ID without having to revert back to using Acrobat for something this basic, I came across this thread. Since this is an old thread and pertains to CS6, I was really hoping that by the time they go to CC it would be there, but alas, it isn't.

So, based on @Bob's comment "You can’t have version two without version one," I think it's safe to say that we are officially on ver 1.5.

Does anyone happen to know when we can expect to see version 2?

-Marc

B

Brad S.

Known Participant

LoL @ you and your expectations.

ie. be happy with what you've got and don't question it. Adobe with spoon feed you half baked features when they damn well feel like it.

A

Anonymous

I've had non stop issues with the form function and not only purched the upgrade for the form functionality but promised it's efficacy to a client (based on the Adobe presentation). Until the functionality has been debugged to the point where it actually works as promoted, on multiple pdf viewers, versions etc. it is simply not living up to its promise, and embarrassing me in the process. FAIL.

BobLevine

Community Expert

Multiple PDF viewers? Not likely....EVER. Have you looked at what you are exporting to? It's not PDF, it's Adobe PDF.

For those of you wishing enhance features, discussing them here is fine, but you'd do far better to make your feelings known here: https://www.adobe.com/cfusion/mmform/index.cfm?name=wishform

When you do make sure to state your case clearly. Simply saying you want font choices in form fields isn't going to get much attention. You'll need to state why and how it will benefit the users.

Bob

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liamgideon

Participant

Figured out how to make this work, in a bit of a 2 program work around.

Create your form, with correct font sizes at least in InDesign\

Esport as interactive PDF of course

Open in acrobat pro and edit fields, under appearence in the field properties window you can change font and color.

Not sure if this was stated or if it cures your ills but sure did for me.

P

Paul_TaylorAuthor

Known Participant

Which is fine unless you have a large form with lots of different fields and sizes. Then you might as well just go back to Acrobat full time. Honest - Indesign forms is a half baked implementation.

Steve Werner

Community Expert

InDesign forms is a version 1 implementation. It's just the way it is.

Stix_Hart

Inspiring

You can't, you have to open it in Acrobat and do it there.

Think that sucks? Join the club.

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Paul_TaylorAuthor

Known Participant

Huh!

But that was was of the reasons we upgraded so we didn't have to go to Acrobat to do the form work.

This diary gets changed regularly with over 270 - 300 fields. Doing it in 2 separate apps was a pain.

What on earth is the point of having a form field if you cant define the font - even if it is a basic pdf font.

C'm tell me you were joking - right?

Adobe - ?

Stix_Hart

Inspiring

I would loooooove to tell you I'm joking... Have a look at the last patr of this discussion here. Adobe has trumpeted this as a new feature, without telling people that unless you're the defaults kind of person it's not that useful. Perhaps they actually have forgotten that designers use InDesign?

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