Form Fields Showing and Printing Duplicate (Ghosted, Doubled)

I know I’m late to the game here, but I found this page while searching for a solution to the same problem, I believe: I created a document in AI that included a form, PDFed it, and sent it to the client I created it for. The client said she could see the form page fine on her screen, but when she printed it out, it looked like a double exposure (what you could call “ghosted”).

My solution: I opened the doc back up in AI, got rid of any layers (hidden or not) that I was no longer using*, and then when I saved the file as a PDF. When the Save Adobe PDF window popped up, I made sure that that  ALL of the checkboxes in the General tab were unchecked. This worked a charm! 

*I’m not sure that I really needed to delete all of those hidden layers, but I’m glad I did!

CORRECT ANSWER:  Adobe should get off its high horse and create a platform that works for all users, whether they have acrobat or not.  Kind of a useless platform/software if it can't let people use or view docs without problems unless they have thier proprotary tech installed...  Also, Apple i to blame here for the exact same reasons.

CORRECT SOLUTION:  Use Google products.

I have this trouble occasionally when someone emails me a form they've completed.  It's a form that I created, and I *KNOW* for a fact that the original form does not have duplicated fields or fields with identical names as I'm very careful when creating fillable forms not to do either of those things.  I've found that, if I go through and delete the text in every field that has doubling/shadow duplication, save the file, then save it again as an optimized PDF with form fields flattened (which I need to do before uploading it for signatures anyway), the form displays and prints as one would expect it to, without the doubled ghost text.  However, if you save it as an optimized document with flattened fields *before* deleting the text, it will display both sets of text (making it unreadable).  In fact, this is how I usually find out that this issue exists.  I suspect that in these cases, the form is being filled out in some third party application that is somehow breaking the form by duplicating every field that is typed into.  The latest one I received shows the PDF Producer as "iOS Version 17.6.1 (Build 21G93) Quartz PDFContext" so I'm assuming this person filled it out on their iPhone or iPad or similar Apple product.  I've attached a screenshot of the most recent instance of this (the red blockouts are where the student's name, phone number, and email address are).  Interestingly, the signature field is the only field which doesn't show this weird duplication.

I know this issue has been discussed here and other forums - specifially, iOS user signing and the result is ghosted images and no way to adjust the forms or even export without it still showing the duplicated / ghosted images. The solution is rightfully: hope users avoid the Quartz / iOS Preview / etc. However, if that's not an option: I had some gritty success viewing the file full screen (after adjsuting font size, etc. - things that might give interfact stuff like a plus sign) and then screen capturing it. Bigger / higher resultion screen the better. In my case, I was working with a lease and it's still tough. But we have enough now to print and proceed! 

Also, if you have Acrobat, you can try exporting the form data to a data file (FDF) and importing it into a blank form.

See if you can find out what software they used to fill-in and save the form. My guess is it's not Adobe Reader or Acrobat.

A new discovery. When I click on the field to fill it, I can see the duplicate text pop up.

After I change or delete the content of the field, the duplicate text does not change. It disappears when I click outside of the field, but when I print the PDF it shows both the text I entered in the field and the old duplicated text.