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Participant
May 3, 2018
Answered

i made a pdf of an order form into a fillable form, but now it autofills all fields, how do i prevent that?

  • May 3, 2018
  • 3 replies
  • 1290 views

I have tried my best to turn a useless paper only form from one of my vendors into one that can be filled in on my mac. I downloaded it into Acrobat and went to Prepare form. I made all of the text boxes that would need to be filled in every time I use this form. Thought I had it all figured out, but then I went and entered the first style, color and quantity and it autofilled the entire form with those specifics. How do I make it work so that each row of fields can be different? I tried several different ways to insert an image of it here to show people, but for some reason every way I tried it flashed a bold red sign saying, "IT WAS FORBIDDEN". So, if anyone out there knows what I am talking about and can help me that would be great!!

Thank you,

Katie

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Correct answer try67

You need to give each field a unique name.

3 replies

Bevi Chagnon - PubCom.com
Legend
May 4, 2018

Looks like a nice script, Gilad. Thanks!

|    Bevi Chagnon   |  Designer, Trainer, & Technologist for Accessible Documents ||    PubCom |    Classes & Books for Accessible InDesign, PDFs & MS Office |
Bevi Chagnon - PubCom.com
Legend
May 3, 2018

Kudos to you for doing this for a form you use regularly. Once you get this corrected, it will save you a lot of work! That's smart thinking.

It sounds like the electronic form wasn't created correctly.

These would be the basic steps to take:

  1. Open the original non-fillable form in Acrobat.
  2. Run the form tool. it will put you in form creation mode as well as try to identify the different fields in the form.
  3. Delete any fields that it got wrong (sometimes it reads lines as a field when they're really just decorative).
  4. Add any new fields that it missed.
  5. Be sure that you do not fill in any information at this point; it will cause problems like what you're experiencing. When you're
  6. Save the form and exit out of Forms Editing mode.

Then open the form and fill it in, and it should work.

How do I make it work so that each row of fields can be different?

This is a more advanced procedure. I think the problem is that the rows and columns of cells have conflicting names, rather than unique ones. Every individual form field must have a unique name. If 2 or more fields have the same name, then the same data will populate them.

In your example here is what the cell names in that part of the form should be:

For the cells in row 1:

     style00  color00  quantity00

For the cells in row 2:

     style01  color01  quantity01

You get the idea. Note that the first row is 00, the second is 01, third is 02, etc. I know. Chaulk it up to computer geekiness!

For now, go back to your form and open up the forms editing tool. Scan down the left side where your form fields are listed. Check the names. Rename any that might be incorrect (you can do it right there in the panel, just double-click on the name to edit it).

Then close out of Form Editing mode, save it, and try the form again.

Let us know how this works out!

|    Bevi Chagnon   |  Designer, Trainer, & Technologist for Accessible Documents ||    PubCom |    Classes & Books for Accessible InDesign, PDFs & MS Office |
try67
Community Expert
try67Community ExpertCorrect answer
Community Expert
May 3, 2018

You need to give each field a unique name.

KT4BAMAAuthor
Participant
May 3, 2018

I was afraid of that. There are more then 230 fields on the page. Thank you for the help. I will have to decide if it is just easier to click on each field and fill it, move the text box over and move to the next field. It just seems so silly, that I thought certainly I was doing something completely wrong.

Thanks again,

Katie

KT4BAMAAuthor
Participant
May 5, 2018

Don't do that, it's a waste of time and effort. You can use this script I've developed to assign unique names to all of the fields in your file with a single click: Custom-made Adobe Scripts: Acrobat -- Rename Duplicate Fields to Unique Fields


I wish I had seen this before I finished renaming all of my fields individually.