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thebzaforums
Participating Frequently
July 30, 2014
Question

Pdf form field data disappearing?

  • July 30, 2014
  • 4 replies
  • 45953 views

I am a designer creating fillable field form pdfs (service agreements, questionnaires) for a client (event services management) to send to their customers to fill out, in some cases sign digitally, and email back.  In most cases, the fields the customers typed information in is blank in the returned form pdf.

Customers have been using Adobe Acrobat, Apple Preview, and presumably other pdf software.  We have started to insist they only use Acrobat, but even in those cases the data fields are coming back blank.

I have read of instances where formatting fields within the form for font and font size can cause problems.  Is that really the case?

I do optimize the pdfs when saving to be compatible as far back as Acrobat 4.

Any assistance is greatly appreciated!!!

    This topic has been closed for replies.

    4 replies

    E
    Ernesto5C8F
    New Participant
    September 9, 2020

    Please help.  I have been taking roll on a PDF I created.  I never opened it with anything other than Adobe Acrobat.  Adobe Acrobat crashed, and now when I open this week's attendance roll sheet, all the data I input into it using the form-filler has been erased.  Can someone help me recover it?  I searched my downloads, and the file is there, but it also is empty.

    try67
    try67
    Adobe Expert
    September 9, 2020

    Did you ever save it with the data you filled in? If so, it should still be there. If you didn't then it's most likely gone.

    Alluring_Crystal16B8
    Alluring_Crystal16B8
    New Participant
    October 28, 2020

    I clicked on save after every 3 or 4 entries to ensure there were no losses of data. 


    I found opening the form in chrome fixed the problem. 
    I was able to read & continue filling then print to pdf and read in Adobe.  But Adobe doesnt seem to have the smarts to get around minor violations in the pdf standard.

    Seems the adobe program is a bit more buggy than others that use the pdf standard. Possibly a message worth taking note of.

    thebzaforums
    thebzaforumsAuthor
    Participating Frequently
    August 13, 2014

    Thank you all for your replies!

    I believe I found the answer to my particular problem - I was merely saving the document as a PDF, when in fact it needs to be saved in Adobe Reader in this fashion:

    File>Save As Other>Reader Extended PDF>Enable More Tools (includes form fill-in % save)...

    Now that I save the forms this way, I've not had any more problems.

    I really hope this helps others!!!

    G
    gkaiseril
    Inspiring
    August 13, 2014

    The "save as other > Extended Reader Rights" is only available with Acrobat Standard or Professional the free Reader cannot perform this task.

    thebzaforums
    thebzaforumsAuthor
    Participating Frequently
    August 13, 2014

    I cannot speak to this, as I do only use Acrobat Reader Pro.  And not to nitpick, but the dialogue dropdown doesn't mention anything about "rights".  Though that may very well be implied.

    R
    REDSKYSTUDIO
    Participating Frequently
    August 12, 2014

    George is right, but there is another issue that I've kept coming up against within the Adobe Reader app for iOS.  I created a form with 20px square boxes for entering numbers (16pt), but after I entered the numbers in the form when testing, the numbers disappeared again and only reappeared if I clicked back in the box.  I tried decreasing the font setting to 12pt, but that didn't work.  It turned out that the problem was the stroke that I had around the box for some reason. Once I removed the stroke the problem was eliminated.

    Maybe not the same issue you were having, but might help someone else!

    try67
    try67
    Adobe Expert
    August 12, 2014

    At some point you opened the file in Apple's Preview, which corrupted it.

    You can use this tool to fix it:

    http://blog.practicalpdf.com/2013/08/introducing-the-practicalpdf-fix-form-utility/

    On Tue, Aug 12, 2014 at 8:24 PM, REDSKYSTUDIO <forums_noreply@adobe.com>

    R
    REDSKYSTUDIO
    Participating Frequently
    August 13, 2014

    If I receive the file via email on my iPhone, is there a way to avoid opening it in Preview before I 'Share' it with the Adobe Reader app? Even if there is a way, I couldn't expect all of my recipients to know the same trick.

      G
      George_Johnson
      Inspiring
      July 30, 2014

      This is almost always due to people using Preview, which causes all sort of damage to a PDF, particularly if it's a form. Often when people insist Preview wasn't involved, further investigation reveals that it was. It's possible it can happen in Adobe Reader or Acrobat, but I've been able to get my hands on a document that's confirmed it. I'd be interested in looking a document where Acrobat/Reader is implicated. If you don't want to post one somewhere, you can email me at: acroscript at gmail dot com

      Microsoft Reader causes it own unique types of corruption to PDF forms, so it should be avoided as well.

      Regarding fonts, the problem may appear to be fixed by somehow altering the fonts in the fields, but this is really due to Acrobat regenerating the correct field appearance, which is triggered by the change in the field properties.

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