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Answered

Editing text in PDF - driving me crazy!

Forum|Forum|2 years ago
December 15, 2023
2 replies
3693 views

Hi there,

I was "gifted" a few PDFs that are originally IRS forms that I have to make some changes on. Originally, these forms were templates that someone could easily fill in the info. But now, these PDFs that I am trying to modify the data, when I go to Edit (and I have tried this in 1,000 ways) it selects TOO much of the area (it becomes a blue box with the handle on top). So when I try to type anything, even if I just select the word I want to change, everything inside the blue box disappears. It's driving me nuts. I know that it would be much better to start from the original template and re-create this, but I really really want to learn how to do this so that it will be easier to deal with next time. Thank you please send help!!! 🙂

Correct answer try67

Hi there Try67,

Thank you so much for your reply. When you copy the box to another file, what kind of file do you mean? I just want to be clear what this other "file" looks like so I'm doing it right (or do as well as I can 🙂 - I appreciate your help!! 🙂

Rachel

Just another, blank PDF file.

Randy Hagan

Community Expert

Unless you need entered data from those IRS forms, I'd suggest that you just download them again from the irs.gov website.

The federal government has put a lot of effort to design consistent fillable forms that you can download directly from them. Why mess with something that's designed to be easy to fill out, sign digitally and sent/distributed to IRS specification?

Jus' sayin' ...

Randy

W

Wrigley_1060Author

Participating Frequently

By the way, I'd even settle for a quickie solution, like putting a text box or something OVER the words I want to replace. I wish I could just delete the few letters I need to delete and just type over the thing that I want to type, but it's apparently in some mode that won't let me do this. Ahhhh!! 🙂

Thom Parker

Community Expert

If they were from the IRS, then it is possible they are static XFA forms. In this case you'd need the AEM forms tool to edit them.

Can you post one of the forms?

Thom Parker - Software Developer at PDFScriptingUse the Acrobat JavaScript Reference early and often

W

Wrigley_1060Author

Participating Frequently

Not really. The easiest way to check the form type is to execute this code in the console window.

First just run this line

xfa

If it returns "undefined", it's a regular PDF form, if not, its an xfa form.

Either way, changing text on the PDF itself is always problematic, and not the right way to do it. From what I can see the text box has to be expanded horizontally. Just be careful. The right way to do this is to always change the original document, convert it a PDF, and then use the Replace Pages tool in Acrobat to import the changes into the form. If you don't have the original document, then you can try converting the PDF form into a .doc file. Or some other format.

Hi there Thom,

Thank you for your very detailed reply. This is my first time looking at the code "behind the scenes" part of Adobe. I was able to open the console (Ctrl+J) and typed in xfa in the botttom box of that javascript debugger - this is what it says:

xfa
ReferenceError: xfa is not defined
1:Console:Exec
undefined

It seems like a lot more work than I have time for (and beyond my experience) - it could be that I may just start from scratch (use a template that already has the proper places to enter info) and then take a workshop on the ins & outs on Adobe. I think I really need to learn a heck of a lot more on how this works, especially since I am the person that tends to fix other people's mistakes. I really appreciate your time! 🙂

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