Fillable PDF Form - Field Suspected To Be Corrupt Won't Delete

[erica25225878]

I'm using Adobe Acrobat Pro to edit a fillable PDF form for work. The file was sent to me from a coworker. Within the form there are a few fields that would appear to be text fields, but when looking in their properties a few things are noticed:

1. The field type is just "Field"

2. In each tab I can't edit any of its properties, and I can confirm it's not locked

3. It's name value is blank, as well as the tool tip. I can't give it a name given ^, so I can't delete it via the JS console

4. It won't delete by any conventional means, including the JS console.

5. I'm able to scale it by clicking and dragging its sides and translating it via click and drag. Rescaling or repositioning can't happen via its properties. 

6. In its Appearance properties, its border, fill, and text color and font size change to a random color/value every time I open the PDF as a whole. This leads me to think some kind of memory overflow is involved.

All I want to do is delete these fields. This is a critical business document I don't want to remake from scratch, any help is appreciated. 

[PDF Automation Station]

I have encountered this previously with forms sent to me so I don't know how it happens.  When you run a script that lists field names and also call those fields, you end up with a field name, but null when you call the field.  In other words, the field name is present but the field is null.  After that you can find the field in the field panel in form editing mode and delete it from there by selecting it and pressing the delete key.  Here's the script I ran in the console:

for(var i = this.numFields - 1; i > -1; i--)
{
var fieldName = this.getNthFieldName(i);
console.println(fieldName+":"+this.getField(fieldName))
}

You should get a list of field names and [object field] seperated by a colon.  If you see null instead of [object field], select that field in the panel and delete it.

[creative explorer]

@erica25225878 I totally this it may be corrupted. When your co-worker exported or saved as a PDF, what 'compatibility' did the save it? I usually use Acrobat 5 or 6. 

[try67 · Accepted solution]

I've seen such fields in the past. I call them "ghost fields". The only way I found of removing them is by using the Redaction tool. Move them to an empty part of the page and use the Redaction tool (while holding down Ctrl) to draw a redaction annotation over them, and then apply it. This should (hopefully) get rid of them. If it doesn't, you might need to start the file from scratch, or just that page.

[S. S]

@erica25225878 Hi Erica,

Thanks for writing in!

While you have a solution already shared above, would you mind sharing a sample file with me to test this issue? 

From the description, this sounds strange and shouldn't be happening.

If I am able to get a test file to try and reproduce in-house, it would be helpful to share the data to the devs to come up with a more concrete solution.

-Souvik