Acrobat Form Field Auto Detect

Question

hi there. i have an indesign form that i exported to a pdf.

in that form there are boxes to check. when i try to bring it into acrobat (with form field detection on), it recognizes the line spaces for people to fill in but for some reason is not recognizing the check boxes (created using zapf dingbats squares).

Id like to have them recognized without having to manually create fields for each individual box.

Little help please?

try67 · Answer

You can't change the way the fields detection wizard works, and it never does a perfect job, but it is possible to use a script to identify certain characters (like check-boxes) and place fields on top of them, and that does work perfectly.

Two such (paid-for) scripts are these ones I've created that will generate check-boxes based on Wingdings characters (I could probably adjust it to use other fonts, too) and text fields based on sets of underscrores:

http://try67.blogspot.com/2015/09/acrobatreader-convert-wingdings-to.html

https://try67.blogspot.com/2020/04/acrobatreader-convert-underscores-to.html

You can also get them from my new web-site, where's there's currently a "soft launch" sale (The discount code is available on the front-page):

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

https://www.try67.com/tool/acrobat-reader-convert-underscores-to-text-fields