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cathy_f1
Participant
November 2, 2018
Question

Calculated field doesn't calculate on one computer

  • November 2, 2018
  • 2 replies
  • 334 views

I am trying to troubleshoot a pdf document that has some calculated fields in it. In particular, there are two fields which are multiplied together and the result appears in a field next to it. I have opened the file on multiple computers running mac os 10.13.6, 10.12.6, 10.6.8, with Reader 9, X, XI, & DC, and the multiplication happens perfectly and updates the calculated field when I tab out of either of the two input fields. On the user's computer (a mac running 10.13.6) when we open the file and change an input field and tab out the result field doesn't change. On her mac she started with DC, and I have installed X & XI. All are broken, while on 4 different computers back in my office it works perfectly in every version of Reader that I can find. (She is a Standard user on her mac, and with both Standard and Administrator users back in my office everything looks fine.)

I have watched the system.log while trying to get the calculated field to update, and no error messages. Can't find any error messages anywhere, it just doesn't calculate the field when running on her computer.

Anyone have any ideas of what is going on?

This topic has been closed for replies.

2 replies

try67
Community Expert
try67Community Expert
Community Expert
December 26, 2018

Did you open the file on that computer at any point using a different

application, such as Apple Preview?

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cathy_f1Author
Participant
November 2, 2018

To reply to myself, I accidentally figured out that she had somehow broken something in the file, when I accidentally broke my copy and realized that the one that she had sent us this morning that was still in my mailbox is still good. The way that I broke it had to do with moving it between directories, and/or renaming it, and/or modifying it but not saving it, I'm really not sure. I suspect that this has something to do with Adobe not using the mac os X file services libraries and instead rolling their own, which probably don't work quite correctly on a modern disk architecture.

But, anyway, I replaced the broken file with the one that she sent, and it works great! Yes, we are the Adobe Zone (a version of the Twilight Zone for sure) but we have figured out how to work around whatever weirdness this is.

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