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Inspiring
October 2, 2025
Answered

Form calculation fields not working

  • October 2, 2025
  • 1 reply
  • 390 views

Neither of the three calculation fields (Value, Simplified field notation, Custom calculation script) will save anything when I edit them. They just revert to greyed out after I have finished adding a calculation, does not matter what I input, I've tried everything.

 

This is on a blank document created in Acrobat Pro and saved locally to my hard drive. The weird thing is I have another cloud pdf doc where calculations work just fine.

 

After some experimentation, I tried copying a working field from the other document to the blank document. Then the Simplified field notation field would save correctly, and I was able to change the formula to fit my field names in the blank document. But if I change this field to a Value and try to pick the fields, we're back to not saving anything. If I then go back to Simplified field notation and input anything, it now won't save, so it is now broken.

 

So it is kinda doable with the workaround as long as you keep it as a Simplified field notation, but this issue is very frustrating.

 

How can fields work correctly in one document, and not in another? Docs seems to have same setup, in same program and on same computer. Adobe, please fix this!

Correct answer Soulsqueeze76

I applied the calculation in all three ways, and all of them worked. There might be something wrong with your application. If you have the new UI enabled, disable it. You can also try running a Repair Installation from the Help menu.


I asked this in another post and god the solution! I had to access the Properties menu from the document field itself and not from the Fields sidebar, then it worked as it should.
https://community.adobe.com/t5/acrobat-discussions/calculations-not-working/m-p/15531719#M521306
Seems like such an obvious bug that Adobe should fix.

1 reply

try67
Community Expert
Community Expert
October 2, 2025

Seems like the first file got corrupted. Did you edit the code at any point via the Edit All JavaScripts dialog?

Inspiring
October 2, 2025

No. I just started a new document, went to "Prepare a form" and then "Properties" on the text field, and tried to add some calculations.

try67
Community Expert
Community Expert
October 2, 2025

Yeah here is a test doc:
Test-calculation-field.pdf 


I applied the calculation in all three ways, and all of them worked. There might be something wrong with your application. If you have the new UI enabled, disable it. You can also try running a Repair Installation from the Help menu.