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keithk24724942
keithk24724942
Participant
April 21, 2015
Question

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

  • April 21, 2015
  • 3 replies
  • 134367 views

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!

    3 replies

    N
    NoNoohoh
    Participant
    July 24, 2020

    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
    Community Expert
    Bernd AlheitCommunity Expert
    Community Expert
    July 25, 2020

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

    gmizen
    gmizen
    Participant
    March 29, 2017

    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
    Community Expert
    try67Community Expert
    Community Expert
    March 29, 2017

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

    renaming all the fields.

    G
    George_Johnson
    Inspiring
    April 21, 2015

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

      keithk24724942
      keithk24724942Author
      Participant
      April 21, 2015

      What do you mean?

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

      K
      KernelC
      Participant
      January 2, 2018

      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.


      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.

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