Prevent multiple text boxes from merging into one large text box 2

[kyle7474]

There doesn't seem to be an Adobe solution to this.

As LUDICROUSLY expensive your products are, I demand perfection from every single product.

That being said, this is a feature that is needed.

A user on the now locked discussion, mentioned that editing was to fix typos generally, if that's the case, are we to recreate forms from scratch whenever we need to add a text box and a form field? Or an additional checkbox perhaps because we have created a new division in our company.

In this case, I simply am trying to add TWO things, a form field for a date and a radio button. I added the three words to my PDF and thought I was done, so I got out of editing mode and into preview...Well I forgot a colon, so I went back into editing and noticed the text boxes were all merged, I thought no big deal, and I proceeded to add the colon. As soon as I did that all hell broke loose. The rest of the text shifted immediately up next to the colon...

Long story short, I had to spend two hours fiddling with it before finally deleting the text and creating new text boxes.

I cannot tell you how frustrating Adobe is when creating a professional looking form. It makes me miss LiveCycle Designer...but xla forms are archaic now.

Side question: What are big corporations using to create PDF forms? There's no way they use Adobe Pro.

[Dov Isaacs]

Forms fields are not “merged” by Acrobat.

There is a big difference between creating a “text box” using Acrobat's PDF edit function versus creating a box of text that is locked (i.e., can't be modified by the person filling out the form - it is not variable) using Acrobat's forms editing feature.

In the latter case (PDF forms), every item you create is kept separate which is I think what you want.

In the former case, there is no such thing as an actual text box in PDF, regardless of what it may look like in Acrobat's PDF edit function. (Adobe doesn't control the PDF specification and can't simply add such a concept; PDF is an ISO standard!) When you use Acrobat's edit function, an attempt is made to second guess what the “original” formatting would have looked like in Word, PowerPoint, InDesign, whatever. That's why what you think are text boxes merge together. Logically, they appear to be related.

          - Dov

[kyle7474]

Yeah I understand that. Ok let me rephrase, the text boxes are being identified all together.

I have an interesting screenshot you and your devs should take a look at, it's odd.

Hmmmm, is there something I'm doing incorrectly then? I click Add text up at the top to add all the text seen in this document.

I have circled the oddities, those circled at one point was a nightmare for me to edit. Months back, I had to simply add a couple of radio buttons and this time the text was NOT identified as a block/chunk/whatever you want to call it and it's separated as you can see in the screenshot (again circled section.)

What would be the best practice for my scenario, in this case, I added the following: "RMR:", two form fields (1 being a date), "RMR Date", and a radio button. Well this was difficult to do because the text below RMR: kept shifting and sliding.

It would be nice if this was similar to Adobe, I would then merge a text layer with its corresponding form field, but that wouldn't make sense here obviously.

What's the alternative here if things get really tricky? Just wipe out the text and recreate it?

(Also this one page PDF is over 1MB...the older XLA form we have of this same document is 30KB. What is up with that?)

Thank you for your time Dov

[Dov Isaacs]

If you can send me a private message via the forums with a link to this actual file, I can take a look at it closer. Again, I think the issue is that of adding/editing text as opposed to non-modifiable text forms fields. Again, if I can take a look at the actual file, I can probably confirm that.

          - Dov

[Test Screen Name]

The recommendation is and has always been to make the static content (the things that are not form fields, including all labels, lines and boxes) in another app and convert to PDF. Then add the form fields. This is absolutely different from LiveCycle Designer which was used for both, and to edit both. But it didn't make a normal PDF at all.

What is not explained very well (or at all) is what to do when you want to change the static content (for example when you add a new field). You edit your original file and re-make the PDF with a NEW NAME. Then open the existing form and choose REPLACE PAGES. Replace the page(s) of the form in the OLD form with the NEW file. Make backups before you start, it's easy to end up with nothing with a mis-step.

[kyle7474]

Hmmmm ok, so we would create all the words for the document, then Save as Adobe PDF, Then add the boxes, radio buttons, etc. This sounds more difficult in forms with tons of fields, radio buttons, checkboxes, etc though.

We always have a backup, so we're good there.

(Yeah LiveCycle Designer is nice, but it definitely doesn't play well with non-Adobe products. We're in construction, so we have both Adobe Acrobat Pro DC and Bluebeam Revu CAD. XLA forms are a no no. But dang, that is an excellent product for form creation.)

I'll give that a shot though TSN

Dov, TSN, Thank you both for your time and patience, sorry for my inappropriate/unprofessional language to start this post.

[try67]

You misunderstood. You don't need to re-create the fields each time you edit the underlying file.

You just open the old file and use the Replace Pages command, as described above. All the fields, scripts, bookmarks, links, etc. that you created will remain in place. Of course, if the layout of the pages has changed then you might need to re-align the fields and links a bit, but that's about it.

[kyle7474]

No no, I got it, I understand exactly what he's saying.

I was just going through the motions of form creation in my example, not replacing.

I think I will rebuild this form, 1MB for one page seems way excessive right everyone?

[try67]

Depends. There could be an image in the file that takes up 95% of that file-size, or an embedded font, etc.

There's no "normal" size for a PDF page. It can be anything from a few KB to tens, if not hundreds, of MB.

[kyle7474]

WHOA, a single page being hundreds of MB?

Well there is a header/banner. But our old form from LiveCycle is around 287KB (Sorry @ Dov, not 30KB! I was guessing.)

So old form is 287KB from old LiveCycle.

New form built from the ground up all in Adobe is 1.185MB. It's just odd.

[try67]

In theory, yes, it's possible.

To find out the distribution of the file-size open the Content panel on the left, right-click the top-most item and select "Audit Space Usage".

Something like this should appear, with the relevant distribution for your file:

[kyle7474]

WHOA, that's really cool! Thank you for sharing that. Looks like Fonts are somehow an issue for me...I just use one font throughout. It's just Times New Roman

[try67]

Is it the font you're using in all the fields, too?

[kyle7474]

Had to check that one, but yes, the fields are also using Times New Roman.

[try67]

"Times New Roman" is not one of the built-in fonts in the application, which means that it has to be fully embedded in the form when you use it. "Times Roman" is, though.

[kyle7474]

Interesting! Well how was I supposed to know that!

Well that's exciting, I'll fix this and see if that substantially shrinks my document, thank you!

[try67]

There's a catch, though. It's very difficult to remove a font once it's embedded in a file. I recommend you change the fonts in all the fields, then open an older version of the file (from before you added the fields to it) copy them over and then save it.

[kyle7474]

Dang...I don't have a document like that. (like the method you described above, which moving forward I plan on doing from now on, Word doc -> Save as adobe PDF then add forms)

I noticed my Adobe only has Times New Roman. I don't have a Times Roman

[try67]

That's strange, it should be one of the default fonts, at the very top of the fonts list:

Maybe that optimization will help... Worth a try.

[kyle7474]