How to prevent text boxes from being separated after saving?

[Dalrae]

I am making an invoice, and to make it very easy to edit when I come back to it, I set up the text boxes on a column, with multiple new lines in between them, however when I save the PDF it splits the single text boxes into multiple text boxes, making it more difficult to edit them.

Before saving:

After Saving:

Is there some setting I can change to stop this from happening? I want the PDFs to be saved in the way that they were created.

[Thom Parker · Accepted solution]

This is an inappropiate use of Acrobat and PDF. A PDF is not a word document. The content is not meant to be edited. 

To solve this issue, use form fields where data needs to be entered. 

[Allie0311]

This isn't a helpful response.  I have the same question, but I'm NOT using Acrobat to create invoices.

[Bernd Alheit]

There is no setting for this. 

[radzmar]

Why not helpful? People just have a wrong idea of what PDFs are for. Editing is not one of them. And why do you respond here, when not using Acrobat? 

[Test Screen Name]

I think it's a helpful response, it just isn't the response you wanted. Doesn't make it wrong... Yes, this is a big mistake. PDFs were never made for editing. The text box issue is simple: there is no such thing as a text box in PDF. It is not saved. It is made by guesswork. So, after editing, especially if you move "text boxes" close together, it may guess wrong next time.

[Allie0311]

I just wanted to update the year on my engagement letter.  Why would Acrobat allow me to insert a header/footer and then combine said header/footers into the text of the document when I press edit to literally change a single "1" to a "2"?  Should I go back to Word and change the single digit and then recreate the entire form every year?  If PDFs aren't supposed to be edited, maybe Acrobat shouldn't be marketed as a PDF editor???

[Thom Parker]

You should certainly be able to change a single digit, even if it is combined with other text. I'd suggest selecting the number and entering the new digit, rather than deleting or backspacing before entering. 

[Test Screen Name]

"Should I go back to Word and change the single digit and then recreate the entire form every year? " absolutely, yes. It sounds as if the job would be done in under a minute. If it isn't, then let us know why it takes longer. 
"If PDFs aren't supposed to be edited, maybe Acrobat shouldn't be marketed as a PDF editor???" Yes, we all wish Adobe Marketing would stop doing that. 

[Bernd Alheit]

"Why would Acrobat allow me to insert a header/footer and then combine said header/footers into the text of the document when I press edit to literally change a single "1" to a "2"? "

Where have you seen this?

[Abambo]

I just wanted to update (...)

By Allie0311

You really should do all updates with the source file. Editing a PDF document is a last resort solution. A PDF file is basically an electronic sheet of paper where some information has been printed on. And you should treat it like that.

If you need to do corrections, do them in Word (probably 90+% of PDF documents are created in Word) or whatever you used initially to create the document.

[mp6819]

Agreed. I've recently come to this ridiculous realization myself. The product is marketed as an editing tool, however, it is not. I share my frustrations with you! It is silly that you're allowed to generate a whole textbox but then, after saving the entire file, it splits up the entire textbox up into multiple individual textboxes just because it feels like it? Like why not just keep it as a whole textbox? It seems like it's going out of its way to do this change that no one asked it to do! Silly! 

[Thom Parker]

Acrobat Pro is not a document editing tool. Where do you see that it is marketed as such? 

It is a document viewing, processing, and finishing tool. 

Content editing is a task for word processors and layout tools. These are all separate things. 

[Jason38793062bam1]

I would say Adobe does market Acrobat Pro as being very useful for editing PDFs, especially the flow of text. There is a simple way that so far I have seen it maintain the whitespace. Any empty line, just put in a single space. I believe you will need to also put one after the last lines of text as, there is the possibility it splits the last couple lines of text into their own boxes.

[Thom Parker]

Well, that's unfortunate, but not surprising.  The gulfs between marketing, Adobe support, and actual functionality are vast. 

[Allie0311]

I'm using Acrobat, just not in the way OP was, which was deemed "inappropriate" thereby negating any obligation to provide an answer apparently.  🤷🏻‍♀️

[try67]

The answer is no, it's impossible to prevent the application from doing it, if it decides to do so.

But why do you care if it does it? You just wanted to change one digit, no? Make that change, save the file, and that's it.

[RedMcDeb]

Is there a way to reverse the text back to one text box after saving and converting into multiple text boxes?

[VeezyLife]

I second that. This is a useless non-answer. I have the same problem and I literally never edited the document and never will. Your jumping to useless assumptions that have nothing to do with the problem at hand.

Whether or not one may or may not edit the document in the future is not the point. The point is that adobe has a feature to add text in the software and it works the first time and keeps the text all together then in between saves everything gets split up. They can easily fix it, or at the very least add a feature to highlight/select all text and add to a single text box again, if they wanted to. Adobe needs to add downvoting to these things because this is marked as a correct answer wand it is certainly the furthest thing from a correct answer in anyones mind. I suspect the user marked his own answer as correct. I see it often. Usually 99% of the time on wrong answers such as these.

[Test Screen Name]

Or, make the invoice in Word. There's nothing to be gained at all by struggling to make it in Acrobat. You can use Acrobat or Word to convert your Word document to PDF in seconds - but never edit the PDF. Keep re-editing the Word document.

[Saltysaurus]

I have to admit, Acrobat changing the text format after saving the file is rather exasperating. I am creating a fillable form, and have to recreate a PDF using just Acrobat. I don't understand why there isn't an option to disable this from happening.

[Thom Parker]

Why do you have to recreate the PDF using just Acrobat? Acrobat is not a content creation tool, so it is not appropiate for this purpose.

[Abambo]

I have to admit, Acrobat changing the text format after saving the file is rather exasperating. I am creating a fillable form, and have to recreate a PDF using just Acrobat. I don't understand why there isn't an option to disable this from happening.

By Saltysaurus

Use Word to create your form and Acrobat to set up the form fields.

[try67]

And when you want to make changes to the underlying layout or content do so in Word once more, generate a new PDF file and then use the Replace Pages command in Acrobat on the old file to replace the old pages with those from the new one. This will keep all the fields you've already created intact.

Of course, if the layout of the file changed you'll need to adjust their locations to match it, but at least you won't have to start from scratch.

[Daniell27206965ucvi]

I am currently looking at this issue. I work in a CPA firm. We scan all of our client documents into PDFs because we are going completely digital.  But we need to mark up documents. I currently create a text box to show what numbers were added together (RIP PDFlyer).  I save it as one big text box. I need to go back in and edit the box, or just move it down. Now it is many small boxes, which must be moved individually - creating a waste of time and formatting as it is nearly impossible to align them all up again.   I am not actually editting PDFs - I am trying to edit my note/textbox.  I can't go back to Word or source document.  We are going digital (working remotely and completely in  the cloud) so physically writing on a paper document and scanning on the tail end isn't possible.