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Answered

Why can't I distribute objects (not form elements) in Acrobat DC

Forum|Forum|3 years ago
July 19, 2022
4 replies
3990 views

For the life of me, I can't find the option to horizontally distribute elements across a page. I'm not talking about form elements. I have been scouring the internet for information and can't find anything except how to distribute form elements using "Prepare Form," which won't do what I need. I can see a button to "Align Objects" and one to "Arrange Objects" but neither of those is what I need. I have 3 text boxes that I need to distribute evenly across the bottom of the page, on every page of a 40-ish page PDF doc. How do I access feature?

Details:

* Acrobat DC (22.001.20169).

* Windows 10.

Thanks!

Correct answer JR Boulay

"I have 3 text boxes that I need to distribute evenly across the bottom of the page, on every page of a 40-ish page PDF doc"

You can do this in less than 4 minutes:

- Create 3 text form fields, distribute them, fill them and set their appearance.

- Select the 3 fields and right-click > Duplicate Across Pages.

- Flatten the document. You can use a Preflight fixup, a line of Javascript, or this free tool: https://www.abracadabrapdf.net/?p=972

A

albertjin

Participant

Snap to Grid may help here to reduce the need of this feature. 😂

JR Boulay

Correct answer

Community Expert

"I have 3 text boxes that I need to distribute evenly across the bottom of the page, on every page of a 40-ish page PDF doc"

You can do this in less than 4 minutes:

- Create 3 text form fields, distribute them, fill them and set their appearance.

- Select the 3 fields and right-click > Duplicate Across Pages.

- Flatten the document. You can use a Preflight fixup, a line of Javascript, or this free tool: https://www.abracadabrapdf.net/?p=972

Acrobate du PDF, InDesigner et Photoshopographe

S

Steve25310287rmasAuthor

Participant

@JR Boulay @Bernd Alheit @Amal. Thanks for the replies. I appreciate your time. I must say that using manually created form fields for this purpose really seems like a hacky workaround for what should be a basic functionality. (It's a lot more work too, in my use case, since the info in the form fields will be different on every page.)

I get that not everyone needs this, but it is core in other products--even in other Adobe products. Ah well... I guess we don't always get what we would like. Would love to see this added to Acrobat as a basic feature, side by side with "Align."

I will check out Abracadabrapdf. Thanks for the suggestion.

Regards,

Steve

Thanks

Amal.

Community Manager

Hi there

Please share your feedback/feature request with the engineering team using the link https://www.adobe.com/products/wishform.html

Regards

Amal

JR Boulay

Community Expert

Using the "Edit" tool, select two or several boxes then right-click or use the "OBJECTS" icons in the right pane.

Acrobate du PDF, InDesigner et Photoshopographe

S

Steve25310287rmasAuthor

Participant

Thank you for your response. I'm trying to distribute the objects, not align them. I want them to be evenly spaced along the width of the page, like you can do in Illustrator and other products. Align doesn't do that. It just aligns all objects to the left, right or center, horizontally or vertically. It doesn't distribute them, as far as I can see.

I thought I remembered being able to distribute objects in Acrobat in previous versions, but maybe I'm mistaken???

Bernd Alheit

Community Expert

Use form text fields for this.

Bernd Alheit

Community Expert

Does you mean Comment text boxes?

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