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UK_Will
Participant
August 10, 2021
Question

Dropdown list - Add Items

  • August 10, 2021
  • 2 replies
  • 1835 views

Hi there,
I have the Adobe Acrobat DC, and I am creating a dropdown list. However, it is only allowing me to add a maximum of 14 items and no more. The form I am working on it requires more than that 14 items. How can I add the additional items? Any assistance is much appreciated 🙂

    2 replies

    Bernd Alheit
    Community Expert
    Bernd AlheitCommunity Expert
    Community Expert
    August 10, 2021

    What happens when you add more items?

    U
    UK_WillAuthor
    Participant
    August 10, 2021

    Hi Bernd, 

    Thank you for offering your help, I had the program restarted and is now allowing me to add more items.... very strange... But anyway, just want to say  Thanks for your time. 

    Karl Heinz Kremer
    Community Expert
    Karl Heinz KremerCommunity Expert
    Community Expert
    August 10, 2021

    I just tried this with my version of Acrobat (which is the latest), and I can definitely add more than 14 items (I stopped at 20). So it is not a restriction of Acrobat.

     

    You can always add the items for a dropdown list programatically, which I prefer when I have long lists anyway - it cuts down on the clicking and typing, and also reduces the potential for mistakes. You do this with JavaScript by using the Field.setItems() method: https://opensource.adobe.com/dc-acrobat-sdk-docs/acrobatsdk/html2015/index.html#t=Acro12_MasterBook%2FJS_API_AcroJS%2FField_methods.htm%23TOC_setItemsbc-19&rhtocid=_6_1_8_31_2_18

     

      U
      UK_WillAuthor
      Participant
      August 10, 2021

      Hi Karl, thanks for your reply.

      Umm, that is interesting... Maybe something is wrong with my program... is my version the same as yours?

      Also thank you very much  for sending the link for the guidance, I appreciated, however, I have  zero knowledge on JavaScrip...  and was not able to understand the guidance. 

      Karl Heinz Kremer
      Community Expert
      Karl Heinz KremerCommunity Expert
      Community Expert
      August 10, 2021

      I have the same version number, but I run "Pro" and not "Standard" (and on a Mac). Unfortunately, I don't have access to Standard, so I cannot test to see if that behaves differently than my Pro version. I understand, that to make sense out of that page from the API documentation, you do need some background in JavaScript. If you can manage to add a button to your document, and use the following as a JavaScript that gets run on a "Mouse Up" event, you can add items programatically. You would then remove the button after you've added the items. With Acrobat Pro, you have access to the JavaScript console, which I think is not available in Acrobat Standard, but I might be wrong: Try Ctrl-J to see if the console pops up. If that's the case, you should be able to run the script in the console:

       

      this.getField("Dropdown").setItems(["1", "2", "3", "4", "5", "6", "7", "8", "9", "10", "11", "12", "13", "14", "15", "16", "17", "18", "19", "20" ]);

      Change the name of the field (which is set to "Dropdown") to whatever your field name is, and then replace the "1" and so on with the string you want to display. Make sure that the basic syntax stays the same, otherwise Acrobat will complain about syntax problems. Here is some additonal information about the JavaScript console: https://acrobatusers.com/tutorials/javascript_console/ and here is some old information about how to add a button action (the user interface has changed since then, but the basic idea is the same): https://answers.acrobatusers.com/How-add-JavaScript-mouse-action-Submit-button-q28915.aspx 

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