Tagging content is creating empty tags

Report · Apr 23, 2019

I'm so frustrated. I'm new to this and I think I'm following the instructions I've seen in various online training and manuals, but I keep running into bugs and issues. I don't know if it's because I'm working with a document that was originally a scan?

Most pressing issues:

1. With the Reading Order pane open, I select text and apply a tag from the tool and the tag appears in the Tags panel, it's just an empty tag. When I go into the Content pane, I see text there, nested under a container heading tag. This has happened **numerous** times. Can't figure it out.

2. I'm following the instructions at https://webaim.org/techniques/acrobat/forms#formfields for tagging the form section of my doc, but when I try to tag the form fields (with the "find element" tool, search for "unmarked annotations", select "tag element"), I'm not getting a pop-up dialog with an ability to add a tag.

Any help would be greatly appreciated!

Report · Apr 24, 2019

1. Can you post the PDF or a part of it? This is a puzzle. I do not have a similar result with documents I have scanned and OCR'd. When you select the Tag in the Tags panel with Highlight Content on is the text highlighted?

2. As I recall, there is no popup. The find element tool will place the element you are tagging in whichever tag you have selected in the Tags Panel.

Report · Apr 25, 2019

Thanks so much for replying, Raeben3! So, I gave up. I found a Word version of the doc, edited what I could in Word and when I brought that version into Acrobat Pro everything worked the way it should.

I think (this is a guess based on very little experience with this) the file was corrupted-- possibly because it started as a scan and then had form fields added and was OCR'd along time ago in a very old version of Acrobat Pro.

Report · Apr 25, 2019

It's always a great thing to find a source document and properly create the PDF yourself. It usually can solve a bunch of issues from when you inherit someone else's document.

My best,

Dave

Report · Apr 30, 2019

I would agree with Dave__M in that it’s always good to start with a clean document. It’s not always possible but when you start with a PDF, you never know how the file was created and what kind of remnants exist in the document that could cause the frustration that you were experiencing.

Report · Apr 30, 2019

Thanks all! Yeah, after a week or so of experience now, I think next time I would strip all the formatting and start from scratch, rather than trying to add on to whatever was done to the doc who knows how many years ago.

Report · Apr 30, 2019

When teaching classes that touch on accessibility issues, I always preach (sometimes to deer-in-the-headlights faces) that if one doesn't merely type, but actually does 'word processing' in MS Word (or similar app), the PDF Maker/converter can actually do a good job of converting the structure to workable tags in the PDF. Properly using styles in a source doc can put you in a good position for success. But I still see folks pressing the space bar 5 times at the start of a paragraph or hitting the Bold/Bigger buttons for 'headings'... it drives me up a tree!

Good luck.

My best,

Dave

Report · May 01, 2019

Yeah, I'm seeing a lot of that. I have yet to come across a properly-formatted Word doc or Google doc! And it's super easy in Google.