Acrobat X keeps crashing in Edit Forms mode

Report · Jan 24, 2013

Hi!

I use Acrobat primarily to edit forms I made before I started using LiveCycle. I have recently used the adobe cleaner and reinstalled all of CS.5 (because I couldn't figure out how to uninstall Acrobat alone), I am on Windows XP 64 bit--- Acrobat stopped crashing for a few days after the reinstall, now it's crashing when I try to edit form fields. I have a deadline to meet for some form edits... please help?

Many thanks,

Laura

Report · Jan 24, 2013

I don't know what could be causing it, but see if deselecting the following preference helps: Edit > Preferences > Forms > Show field preview when creating or editing form fields.

Does this happen whether or not you're in form editing mode?

Report · Jan 25, 2013

Hi George,

Thank you for your reply. The Preferences change didn't make any difference, nor did installing the update for Acrobat.

It only crashes when I'm in Form Editing mode, whenever I try to select a form field, and it's on a specific, recently edited form:

Is it possible that a conflict has arisen between AI CS5.5 and Acrobat? I never used to have any trouble going back and forth making layout changes in Illustrator and then field changes in Acrobat, but the particular form that's giving me trouble is one I just made changes to in Illustrator.

Your thoughts?

Many thanks

Laura

Report · Jan 25, 2013

Maybe it would help to see the form. I have been trying to move the fields on page 7, you can see where they don't match the layout where changes were made.

https://www.dropbox.com/s/xla5maanzuwt87e/InOut_MHChDep_012413.pdf

Many thanks again,

Laura

Report · Jan 25, 2013

I'll be able to take a look in a bit and let you know if I notice anything.

Report · Jan 25, 2013

Interesting- I just tested some other forms, and now they're crashing whenever I select a form field as well. Testing on my laptop as well (brand new), now Acrobat is crashing there, too. Same instance: it crashes when I select a form field.

Our IT department has been at both computers, updating my OS and so on, still no change.

Wow. I wonder what's going on?

Many thanks

Laura

Report · Jan 30, 2013

Hi again,

I tried Adobe's help/customer support/chat thing to try to find out why this is happening, and the answer I received was that I had to rebuild my 11-page, 665-field form from scratch. Yikes! All my fields are "hand-made", or customized from "detect form fields": there's no quickie way to recreate them.

The person I spoke with said the problem was that the underlying page layout had originally been built in aiCS3 (though I've edited it in CS5.5 since), and so it was too old to use in Acrobat anymore.

It's puzzling- I had been able to make my layout edits in ai, then field edits in Acrobat, up until a couple of weeks ago.

I'm growing concerned that all my forms will become obsolete after a couple of years. That's scary for a company, to have to have all its custom-built and branded forms rebuilt from scratch every year and half or so.

Am I understanding this correctly?

Thanks for any help or information,

Laura

Report · Jan 30, 2013

I'm not sure that's what's wrong and don't know what it means. One thing I did was use PDF Optimizer to remove all of the Illustrator data that's not needed (Discard User Data > Discard private data of other applications)

and it reduced the size of the file by more than 80% (4.87MB > .96MB). It would be interesting to see what happens if you try doing this, making sure to apply just this single optimization. Preflight does show a problem that could be causing this, but I can't say for sure.

If you can recreate the base PDF, you can replace the old pages with the new (after optimizing), and the form fields and any other things will be retained. It's worth a shot.

If that doesn't work, try copying the fields from the old PDF to a new one that you generate, one page of fields at a time. You may have to reposition the fields, but this can be easily avoided as well, and will be much faster.

Report · Jan 30, 2013

Hi- thank you for your reply!

I have tried using Optimizer, with various settings. Still crashes in Form Edit mode.

Can't copy fields from the original form into newly created PDF: once I'm in Form Editing mode, it crashes as soon as I click on a field, or even on the page.

Replace pages? I hadn't thought of that ! I'll try it right now and report back.

I appreciate your help. I'm really up a stump over this, and my boss is getting irritated.

Thanks,

Laura

Report · Jan 30, 2013

If replacing the pages doesn't work, feel free to contact me and I can fix it for you if you send the updated PDF: acroscript at gmail dot com

Report · Jan 31, 2013

Hello again,

I'm crushed! "Replace Pages" didn't work. I will take you up on your offer to fix...

Thank you,

Laura

Report · Feb 01, 2013

Hi

I am having same issue was using 10 on a mac and this started after making a quite complex (for me new to this). Downloaded trial version of Acrobat 11 but every time i go to forms edit and click on box it crashes in both 10 and 11. 11 did work for a few days but need to make some final changes and now cannot.

thank you

andy

Report · Feb 13, 2013

Hi Andy,

I'm stumped as well. I have found that some of my forms are still working, and some just aren't. I will keep an eye on this forum to see if anyone knows why Acrobat is crashing on "Edit Form".

Good luck!

Laura

Report · Sep 19, 2013

Same thing happening to me too on 11.0.04.63. Spent a long time opening, sometimes being able to change the tab order, immediately save, and try another; then crash. Took soo much longer than it should have to edit the tab order .

Someone previously mentioned that their form was edited in AI as well as Acrobat. I know mine was, so maybe it some issue with AI PDFs in Acrobat?

Report · Oct 10, 2013

I was having the same problem, the way I fixed was open the original document (I had one without the forms data) or create a new pdf, put the corrupt one in edit mode, select all the fields, copy and paste into new doc, if you have javascript in the corrupt document, mine uses "document will print", you will have to re-enter that

Report · Sep 19, 2013

I am having a similar problem... I can select the field, but when I try to reorder them manually in the side panel by dragging , it crashes every time! My clients insist that the fields tab in order so I have to be able to re order them... HELP!!!!!

Report · Sep 19, 2013

I should have said, this only happens when I use 11, which I recently downloaded as part of the CC. Seems fine in 10, so will just go back and use that for now. My colleagues versions of 11 seem fine! It is only mine that is crashing.

Report · Dec 19, 2013

Hi Laura

I found that Acrobat crashed everytime I attempted to move a field in the tab order list window.

Solution:

When moving the fields in the tab order window DO NOT CLICK ON THE TEXT. Click on and move the icon only and it does not crash.

Adobe please fix this!

Rob

Report · May 07, 2014

Thanks Rob, this worked for me.

Report · Jan 30, 2015

It seems to crash more consistently when dragging the text, but it still crashes sometimes when dragging the icon.

Report · Jun 24, 2014

Kinda having the same issue here, not building a form but trying to fill out several. They worked fine three months ago (the last time I had to fill them), now it crashes as soon as I click on one of the field to be filled, only the ones that need actual text to be entered, I have a few others which can only accept a checkmark and those aren't crashing the program.

I have a crash report, to whom can I send it?

I am a Community Expert for Adobe

Report · Jun 25, 2014

Having the same issues when I select the Form Editing button, also the field listing on the right hand side isn't visible.

I have however found a TEMPORARY fix that works for me.

1. Open desired PDF

2. Go to Save as "Optimized" (as previously mentioned here) and save/overwrite.

3. IMPORTANT don't close the document but go rather straight to Edit Form fields once again. I have now been able to edit previously configured fields.

Note: Once I close the file it will crash again when I chose Edit Form Fields unless I once again Save as Optimized and overwrite without closing the file.

Hope this helps some people to at least edit some files without having to recreate from scratch.

Report · Jul 22, 2014

I am also having this issue. I re-distilled the PDF, put my fields back on it and all though it does not lock up totally now, there is still a 10 or 15 second delay after you type a few letters into the first field. this makes the end users think it's locked up and then they close acrobat. What has been changed on the forms for version 11?!?! this is a real pain. Please Adobe take a look at this issue.

Report · Jul 23, 2014

Having the same issue. The workaround from Rob8989 is working for me:

Solution:

When moving the fields in the tab order window DO NOT CLICK ON THE TEXT. Click on and move the icon only and it does not crash.

Cheers Rob.

Report · Jul 23, 2014

Actually i got this figured out today. This is on a windows 7 machine. It seemed to work on another login profile, so i deleted all the adobe folders under c:\users\"username"\appdata\local\ c:\users\"users name"\appdata\roaming\ and c:\users\"users name"\appdata\localnow\. Then when i logged back on as the user it seemed to work ok.