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cricket1001
Known Participant
June 11, 2019
Question

How to change font size in fillable forms in the form fill fields?

  • June 11, 2019
  • 2 replies
  • 17403 views

I am in Acrobat Pro 2017

I have forms I have to fill out from different schools and organizations to register our officers.  Sometimes the fillable fields change font size as the text I enter fills the box.  But sometimes the font size doesn't change.  Also, sometimes it doesn't change systematically. So for example: I have 3 phone number fields.  I've entered 3 different phone numbers in the exact same format.  But each of these fields end up being a different size.  I am trying to edit the text I enter in the fillable fields but I can't figure out how to do that.  I read in a comment from a year ago that said to go to edit form and right click on a form field.  All that did was allow me to edit the existing form fields not the fillable form fields.

I also would like to ask if there is a way to have certain form fill fields be saved while still having certain form fill fields that I can fill out each time I enter a new officer.  I'd like to not have to fill out the same info in certain fields each time I have to fill out a form.

Thanks

2 replies

Bevi Chagnon - PubCom.com
Legend
June 13, 2019

It really sounds like whoever created these forms didn't get good enough training in forms design.

It's an art and craft. They definitely missed it on the forms you're describing!

|    Bevi Chagnon   |  Designer, Trainer, & Technologist for Accessible Documents ||    PubCom |    Classes & Books for Accessible InDesign, PDFs & MS Office |
Bevi Chagnon - PubCom.com
Legend
June 11, 2019

Question:

Are you creating the form, or filling in an existing form?

|    Bevi Chagnon   |  Designer, Trainer, & Technologist for Accessible Documents ||    PubCom |    Classes & Books for Accessible InDesign, PDFs & MS Office |
cricket1001
Known Participant
June 13, 2019

Thanks, Bevi,

I am just filling in an existing form.

Pat

cricket1001
Known Participant
June 13, 2019

cricket1001  wrote

Thanks, Bevi,

I am just filling in an existing form.

Pat

Pat, the control of fonts is done by the form 's creator, not the end-user who fills out the form.

No wonder you were confused!


Bevi,

But I was able to change the font size in the "fillable" form fields.  I just have to start with the form in Prepare Form view.  I was able to change all the font sizes to 10 which so far is working perfectly.

I also figured out what to do about the tabs that weren't working right.  The form had more or less duplicate fields at the end of the Fields List.  (As you can read below.)  I took out the duplicate fields at the bottom of the list, Officer Name #1, Agency Name 1#1, Course Title#1, MM3#1, MM4#1 and DD4#1.  This put all the tabs in their correct order and numbered them all in the correct order.  This also took away all "duplicate ghosting" I had in some of the fields.  Now I am going to try and reduce the height of the "fillable" form fields because the text I type ends up too high.  Thanks! 

That is the correct order but when I go back to the document view the MM3#0 tabs to MM4#0, then the tab goes to DD4#0, then tab goes to DD3#0,  then the tab goes to the beginning of the form at the Officer's Last Name.  I went to the Prepare Form and clicked on "More > show tab numbers" and even the tab numbers don't follow either the correct tab order that is listed above, nor the tab direction when in the document view.  Does anyone know what is wrong and how I can fix this. I am finding some of my text in several fields are now have duplicate ghosting going on.  I have noticed when I click in Prepare Form > Fields I have the options of ordering tabs by structure, row, column, manually (this is checked), or unspecified.  When I looked at all the fields listed on the right, I notice there is a:

Officer Name #0

Officer Name #1

Agency Name 1#0

Agency Name 1#1

Course Title#0

Course Title#1

MM3#0

MM3#1

MM4#0

MM4#1

DD4#0

DD4#1