Checkboxes in fillable pdf - starting off in Word

Question

I created a fillable form in Word, with checkboxes. For example, there are several rows that have 3 checkboxes (a Yes, a No, and a Maybe). When I go to "prepare form" in Adobe, it recognizes the checkboxes as radio boxes. Is there a way that I can have Adobe recognize them as checkboxes instead? I also tried editing the word doc and using Webdings font instead to create boxes (rather than have the checkboxes from the developer tool), but Adobe didn't recognize those boxes as anything (neither as checkboxes or radioboxes). I know that I can manually add checkboxes onto the PDF form, but I have tons of checkboxes on each page --it's very tedious and ends up looking messy because some are slighly misaligned.

try67 · Answer

Yes, it is, by using specific characters for the check-boxes (o radio-buttons) and a script to generate fields over them in Acrobat. For example, I've developed a (paid-for) tool that does just that with certain Wingdings characters, and it will pick them up 100% of the time and place the fields precisely over them. You can find it here:

https://www.try67.com/tool/acrobat-reader-convert-wingdings-characters-to-check-boxes-or-radio-buttons

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