Editable PDF form fields wiped

Report · Jan 08, 2026

Hi,

I’m trying to work out whether there’s any way to recover this or whether I need to accept it and start again.

I’ve been working on a 76 page fillable PDF in Acrobat for a few weeks and entered a lot of text into the form fields. I saved regularly, but I always opened and saved the file through Acrobat. If I opened the same PDF directly from Windows File Explorer, it would appear blank (questions present, but no text in the form fields). Because of this, I assumed they were effectively separate versions.

Yesterday, I used the trim / delete pages tool in Acrobat to reduce the document to the last 8 pages so I could send it to my tutor. I did this using what I thought was the “blank” version opened from Windows.

This morning, when I opened Acrobat, all of the form data was gone. Acrobat now shows three copies of the file, all 76 pages, all with empty form fields (layout and questions still intact). In the recent files list there are no older versions showing with the filled in data.

I’ve spent a lot of time trying to restore a previous version but haven’t had any luck so far. Just trying to understand if there's any chance of recovering it, or if it's permanently gone.

Any guidance would be appreciated. Thanks.

Report · Jan 08, 2026

@Emerson_Rafferty9784 trimming the pages does not necessarily clear form data from the remaining pages. However, if you used a specific "Save As" or "Reduce File Size" command during that process, it may have flattened the fields or encountered a save error.

Try looking in the temp folder to see if there are any previous versions here?