STOP Merge Form Fields when combining pdfs!

[jamesukr33]

So, first off, I do NOT WANT TO FLATTEN the fields!!! I want to be able to use them! Please don't suggest that.

Second, I don NOT WANT to create a portfolio. They are lame and worse than useless IME. So please don't sugges that option unless you know of a way to then make the portfolio into a single document WHILE keeping the form fields usable.

Now, I have a single page document which has fillable forms. I want to duplicate that page into 4 pages with the same forms fields. But, as it stands it merges all the fields, so the information on the first page is duplicated to the other 3 pages! I do not want that, I want the fields to be unique so each page can have different values in the forms.

Anyone know how to duplicate a page with form fields to multiple pages WITHOUT merging the fields or flattening them???

Frankly, why Adobe merges the fields is beyond me... 

[Joel Geraci]

What you are asking to isn't possible. The PDF specification doesn't allow it by design. This is to allow fields that appear on multiple pages to be filled out once and be consistent throughout the document.

To do what you want, you'll need to use different field names on the different pages. 

[jamesukr33]

Well that is just stupid. In the Fields tab there is even an option to "Duplicate Across Pages", which I just found and was hopeful would actually do what I want... but of course it didn't. How dumb is that!?!

You can Create Multiple Copies of a form field, and it auto-increments the name so each is unique, but you can't do it across pages!?!

Lame. Sigh...

Thanks for your response, though. I'm still hoping someone will have a fix for this issue. Otherwise, Adobe should fix it themselves.

[PDF Automation Station]

There is nothing for Adobe to fix.  Fields with identical names can only have one value.  Run the following script in the console:

this.createTemplate("MyTemplate");
for(var i=1;i<5;i++){this.getTemplate("MyTemplate").spawn()}

[jamesukr33]

Sure there is... Just have the option to NOT merge the fields but duplicate them across the pages so the don't have identical names.

It would be easier and more intuitive for people than asking them to run scripts to do it, if they have enough experience to figure it out. I mean, if you can have a script for it, obviously Adobe could have the software do it instead of the user.

Anyway, what you wrote didn't work. But I already saved a template of the page and was able to alter your code to make that work. It's a horrible work-around to what should be a built-in feature, but thanks for the assist!

[PDF Automation Station]

I guess I will agree to disagree.  Adobe has a very robust JavaScript engine that allows you to automate many tasks but they can't think of every possible scenario and build them all into the UI.  Template creation is in the UI but I used a script in my answer to make it easier.

[try67]

Let's imagine it worked like you want it to and you had two fields with the same name, but different values.

Say the field name was "CustomerName" and the values were "John Doe" on page 1 and "Mary Jane" on page 2. You export the form data to a database. What is the value of the "CustomerName" field in that export? What would you enter in the DB? See the issue?

The technical explanation is that the "name" property is the unique identifier of each field in a PDF file (there's no "id" property like in some other form standards), so there MUST be a one-to-one relation between the field's name and its value. You can't have a single named field with multiple values, and therefore can't avoid the "merging" of multiple fields in the same file that have the same name.

[Bernd Alheit · Accepted solution]

Use a template page and spawn this page. 

[try67]

You can do it in a few clicks using this (paid-for) tool I've created:

https://www.try67.com/tool/acrobat-duplicate-pages-of-a-pdf-file-including-form-fields

Note that field names will NOT be the same on each page, though. That is technically impossible to achieve.

Edited: Forgot to add the link...