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

[keithk24724942]

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 in. I need this document filled in by today, and it will not let me!

[George_Johnson]

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

[keithk24724942]

What do you mean?

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

[Bernd Alheit]

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

[keithk24724942]

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

[gkaiseril]

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.

[KernelC]

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.

[try67]

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.

[KernelC]

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.

[try67]

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

happen.

[gkaiseril]

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.

[try67]

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.

[Test Screen Name]

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.

[JQassis]

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! 

[gmizen]

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?

[try67]

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

renaming all the fields.

[NoNoohoh]

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.

[Bernd Alheit]

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