PDF form probems

Question

Hi

I'm having problems with a form I created (in Indesign, then saved out to PDF).

It is in 2 sections. (may or may not be related)

1. Initially I was told by the client this:

A user has complained that they aren't ale to edit when they directly download the doc but are able to when they save a copy of it. I reckon this is user error (e.g. the user's computer opens 'downloaded' documents with one piece of software (e.g. adobe PDF reader) and opens saved PDFs with another (e.g. google chrome).

After a bit of research, I decided the problem was to do with Acrobat Reader, and that I had to save it as Reader Extended PDF.

2. Now the problem they are having is:

people have filled it out, saved it but then when the team receive it they can’t view the full answers.

Any suggestions?

Mark

try67 · Accepted Answer

Thank you. Feeling a bit stressed at the moment.

Attached is the PDF that I created.

Also below is a link to a set of emails, that someone at their end has sent with info on different computers / software that they have tried and errors they got.

https://we.tl/t-1Iw4anU2Dv

Thank you again.

- Plus symbol appearing in long fields: This is normal behavior when there isn't enough room to display all the text they enter into the field. It indicates there's some text that isn't displayed. If you don't want that to happen then you have to disable the "Scroll Long Text" option for that field. If you also set the font size to Auto it will get gradually smaller and smaller as they add more text. If you set it to a fixed value they won't be able to fill in more text once the end of the field is reached.

- Black radio-buttons: This is happening because you've set the fill color of those fields to Black. Change it to Transparent and it will be fine. When the fields highlighting is enabled you can't see this issue, though.

The issues in Preview and Edge are to be expected. And hosting the file on a web-page is not going to solve anything, as PDF files are ultimately opened by whatever plugin or application the browser is set to use, and you can't control that.

try67 · Answer

This is not the solution, unless they use a very old version of Reader. In which case you should recommend they update it to a newer version, for many reasons (security, compatibility with current operating systems, as well as the ability to add comments and save the filled-in form without needing special rights applied to the file).

I would double-check with them what application they're using, too. Ask for full-window screenshots. Some people assume they use Reader just because it's installed on their computer, but in fact they are opening the file in a different application, or inside a browser.

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