• Global community
    • Language:
      • Deutsch
      • English
      • Español
      • Français
      • Português
  • 日本語コミュニティ
    Dedicated community for Japanese speakers
  • 한국 커뮤니티
    Dedicated community for Korean speakers
Exit
1

Why do my fill-able PDF forms auto fill every box with whatever I type in the FIRST box?

Community Beginner ,
Apr 21, 2015 Apr 21, 2015

Copy link to clipboard

Copied

Every time I put information into any field in the document, It fills every field with what I put in, no matter what field or order I put it intransient.jpg. I need this document filled in by today, and it will not let me!

TOPICS
PDF forms

Views

120.7K

Translate

Translate

Report

Report
Community guidelines
Be kind and respectful, give credit to the original source of content, and search for duplicates before posting. Learn more
community guidelines
LEGEND ,
Apr 21, 2015 Apr 21, 2015

Copy link to clipboard

Copied

You just need to give each field a unique field name.

Votes

Translate

Translate

Report

Report
Community guidelines
Be kind and respectful, give credit to the original source of content, and search for duplicates before posting. Learn more
community guidelines
Community Beginner ,
Apr 21, 2015 Apr 21, 2015

Copy link to clipboard

Copied

What do you mean?

As soon as I type anything to any box it fills all of them with that field.

Votes

Translate

Translate

Report

Report
Community guidelines
Be kind and respectful, give credit to the original source of content, and search for duplicates before posting. Learn more
community guidelines
Community Expert ,
Apr 21, 2015 Apr 21, 2015

Copy link to clipboard

Copied

Did you create the form? If not inform the creator of the form.

Votes

Translate

Translate

Report

Report
Community guidelines
Be kind and respectful, give credit to the original source of content, and search for duplicates before posting. Learn more
community guidelines
Community Beginner ,
Apr 21, 2015 Apr 21, 2015

Copy link to clipboard

Copied

No I did not, but I'll be sure to let them know.

Votes

Translate

Translate

Report

Report
Community guidelines
Be kind and respectful, give credit to the original source of content, and search for duplicates before posting. Learn more
community guidelines
LEGEND ,
Apr 21, 2015 Apr 21, 2015

Copy link to clipboard

Copied

Each area where you can enter data into a PDF form in the normal view or non-Form Editing view is a field object. Each one of these fields has a name to identify that area or object form other form fields. If the names are the same the fields then those specific fields share many of the same values, the most important is the value of the field.

This is an issue that needs to be addressed by the form's creator.

Votes

Translate

Translate

Report

Report
Community guidelines
Be kind and respectful, give credit to the original source of content, and search for duplicates before posting. Learn more
community guidelines
Community Beginner ,
Jan 02, 2018 Jan 02, 2018

Copy link to clipboard

Copied

um no, it's an issue that needs to be addressed by Adobe. there is no particular reason why a form field in a different location of a pdf document that appears as a separate form field in the navigation needs to have the same value as some form field somewhere else that happens to share the same name property. you all might could provide a check box somewhere to autofill field #2 with field #1's values. of course that might take some coding skillz and/or concern for your users' needs. so we may as well hope for that in one hand, crap in the other and see which one fills up first.

Votes

Translate

Translate

Report

Report
Community guidelines
Be kind and respectful, give credit to the original source of content, and search for duplicates before posting. Learn more
community guidelines
Community Expert ,
Jan 02, 2018 Jan 02, 2018

Copy link to clipboard

Copied

Ah, no. This is a feature, by design, and is part of the PDF ISO standard. It's used by form developers who rely on it to make sure that information entered in one spot appears on another spot exactly the same, and it's not going to change, even if you don't like it.

Votes

Translate

Translate

Report

Report
Community guidelines
Be kind and respectful, give credit to the original source of content, and search for duplicates before posting. Learn more
community guidelines
Community Beginner ,
Jan 02, 2018 Jan 02, 2018

Copy link to clipboard

Copied

except (1) Adobe pretty much still controls the ISO standard process and (b) when Acrobat Pro auto-populates form fields it often gives them the same name regardless of where they appear in the doc. so the "requirement" that different fields with the same name share the same values = making more work for users. typical.

Votes

Translate

Translate

Report

Report
Community guidelines
Be kind and respectful, give credit to the original source of content, and search for duplicates before posting. Learn more
community guidelines
Community Expert ,
Jan 02, 2018 Jan 02, 2018

Copy link to clipboard

Copied

You're wrong on both issues, but this is a moot point. It's not going to

happen.

Votes

Translate

Translate

Report

Report
Community guidelines
Be kind and respectful, give credit to the original source of content, and search for duplicates before posting. Learn more
community guidelines
LEGEND ,
Jan 02, 2018 Jan 02, 2018

Copy link to clipboard

Copied

Not for years. Adobe turned over control of the PDF standard to ISO and they have formed a committee from the user community outside of Adobe to maintain and create the standard. Adobe still controls only their special extensions to the Acrobat and LiveCycle programs.

See ISO 32000-1:2008 for the publicaton date of the first ISAO release. Note that 2008-07 is the year an month of the publication date.

Portable Document Format History

PDF Association has one board member from Adobe out of 9 members, hardly a controlling majority.

Votes

Translate

Translate

Report

Report
Community guidelines
Be kind and respectful, give credit to the original source of content, and search for duplicates before posting. Learn more
community guidelines
Community Expert ,
Jan 02, 2018 Jan 02, 2018

Copy link to clipboard

Copied

Also, name one digital format where two fields with the same name (or ID, if that's the unique identifier) in the same document can have different values.

Votes

Translate

Translate

Report

Report
Community guidelines
Be kind and respectful, give credit to the original source of content, and search for duplicates before posting. Learn more
community guidelines
LEGEND ,
Jan 02, 2018 Jan 02, 2018

Copy link to clipboard

Copied

You are free to apply to your national standards body (ANSI in the US) and demonstrate you are an expert, to put yourself forward for the ISO 32000 committee meetings. 32000-2 was just ratified, I imagine 32000-3 is 7-12 years away so now is the time to start. You will found stout resistance from delegates around the world to incompatible change though, and will need to make a pretty good case to get your change accepted by them ready for the national ballots.

Votes

Translate

Translate

Report

Report
Community guidelines
Be kind and respectful, give credit to the original source of content, and search for duplicates before posting. Learn more
community guidelines
New Here ,
Apr 28, 2023 Apr 28, 2023

Copy link to clipboard

Copied

LATEST

This helped me! I had 3 different date boxes, but everytime I put in a date, all 3 came up as the same date. Now I named them differently and it doesn't anymore! Thank you! 

Votes

Translate

Translate

Report

Report
Community guidelines
Be kind and respectful, give credit to the original source of content, and search for duplicates before posting. Learn more
community guidelines
New Here ,
Mar 29, 2017 Mar 29, 2017

Copy link to clipboard

Copied

I'm looking for a way to automate a way to fill out a contract I have on Adobe Acrobat Reader. Can someone help me figure out a way to auto fill this document?

Votes

Translate

Translate

Report

Report
Community guidelines
Be kind and respectful, give credit to the original source of content, and search for duplicates before posting. Learn more
community guidelines
Community Expert ,
Mar 29, 2017 Mar 29, 2017

Copy link to clipboard

Copied

You can't do it with Reader. It's possible with Acrobat, but would require

renaming all the fields.

Votes

Translate

Translate

Report

Report
Community guidelines
Be kind and respectful, give credit to the original source of content, and search for duplicates before posting. Learn more
community guidelines
New Here ,
Jul 24, 2020 Jul 24, 2020

Copy link to clipboard

Copied

Successful workaround for some forms:

Only works if repeated entries are on separate pages.
My entry on p1 was repeated on fields in page 2.
I extracted p2 and saved as new pdf "Form p2"
I resaved p1, after deleting p2.
I then filled out p1 pdf, p2 pdf, saved each and recombined into single PDF doc to be emailed.

Votes

Translate

Translate

Report

Report
Community guidelines
Be kind and respectful, give credit to the original source of content, and search for duplicates before posting. Learn more
community guidelines
Community Expert ,
Jul 24, 2020 Jul 24, 2020

Copy link to clipboard

Copied

This will work when you combine the files in a portfolio.

Votes

Translate

Translate

Report

Report
Community guidelines
Be kind and respectful, give credit to the original source of content, and search for duplicates before posting. Learn more
community guidelines