What would cause calculations to stop working upon saving the document?

[Sharlizey]

Good afternoon, folks,

I created a form for people to complete on our website. They are able to complete the form through the web browser or they can download a copy to complete. The form is then sent to me via email attachment. I have used the form in every browser I have access to and have downloaded it in any way possible and I have never had an issue with the calculations suddenly stop working. When my customers send it to me, it seems not to work anymore. I can still change the fields referenced for the calculation, but it won't update the solution.Other fields continue to work as intended, but those fields do not involve calculations.

Any ideas what might be causing this issue? Thanks!

[Karl Heinz Kremer]

What are your customers using to fill out the form after it was downloaded? Are they using Adobe Acrobat or Reader? Any 3rd party software? Preview on a Mac? Without knowing what is used to fill out the forms, it's impossible to say what is going on. In general, the document should not behave differently depending on how it was opened (online vs. local). 

[Sharlizey]

I was thinking about what they use to fill out the form as well. I even put a note to complete the form using the web browser or Adobe, but I don't have any way of knowing what they actually use and we all know how well people read directions. lol I was hoping there might be another explination for it, but I think we may just have to work with it and verify the form's calculations elsewhere. We've had a few people alter the solutions and adding permissions caused more of a hinderance for our team when reviewing the forms.

Thanks for your input!

[Karl Heinz Kremer]

If the application used to fill the form is corrupting it, it may actually be rewriting the whole file, and in that case, you may see evidence of that by looking at the document information (Ctrl-D or Cmd-D in Acrobat). This should list what application was used to create the file. If it's different from what should be in there (based on the original file), then you have your culprit. Here is something I wrote up many years ago about the Preview app in macOS: https://khkonsulting.com/2013/06/preview-app-killer-of-pdf-files/