Participant

Answered

STOP Merge Form Fields when combining pdfs!

Forum|Forum|7 months ago
August 25, 2025
4 replies
1401 views

So, first off, I do NOT WANT TO FLATTEN the fields!!! I want to be able to use them! Please don't suggest that.

Second, I don NOT WANT to create a portfolio. They are lame and worse than useless IME. So please don't sugges that option unless you know of a way to then make the portfolio into a single document WHILE keeping the form fields usable.

Now, I have a single page document which has fillable forms. I want to duplicate that page into 4 pages with the same forms fields. But, as it stands it merges all the fields, so the information on the first page is duplicated to the other 3 pages! I do not want that, I want the fields to be unique so each page can have different values in the forms.

Anyone know how to duplicate a page with form fields to multiple pages WITHOUT merging the fields or flattening them???

Frankly, why Adobe merges the fields is beyond me...

Correct answer Bernd Alheit

Use a template page and spawn this page.

D

desertwalker

Participant

Same problem here in Australia. I am so disappointed with this. It has caused a lot of grief. Adobe is really starting to bug me. Justifying there own existence by tampering with things constantly

Bernd Alheit

Community Expert

Read the replies.

try67

Community Expert

It's easier to rant...

try67

Community Expert

You can do it in a few clicks using this (paid-for) tool I've created:

https://www.try67.com/tool/acrobat-duplicate-pages-of-a-pdf-file-including-form-fields

Note that field names will NOT be the same on each page, though. That is technically impossible to achieve.

Edited: Forgot to add the link...

Bernd Alheit

Correct answer

Community Expert

Use a template page and spawn this page.

Joel Geraci

Community Expert

What you are asking to isn't possible. The PDF specification doesn't allow it by design. This is to allow fields that appear on multiple pages to be filled out once and be consistent throughout the document.

To do what you want, you'll need to use different field names on the different pages.

J

jamesukr33Author

Participant

Well that is just stupid. In the Fields tab there is even an option to "Duplicate Across Pages", which I just found and was hopeful would actually do what I want... but of course it didn't. How dumb is that!?!

You can Create Multiple Copies of a form field, and it auto-increments the name so each is unique, but you can't do it across pages!?!

Lame. Sigh...

Thanks for your response, though. I'm still hoping someone will have a fix for this issue. Otherwise, Adobe should fix it themselves.

PDF Automation Station

Community Expert

There is nothing for Adobe to fix. Fields with identical names can only have one value. Run the following script in the console:

this.createTemplate("MyTemplate");
for(var i=1;i<5;i++){this.getTemplate("MyTemplate").spawn()}

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