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C
cetimm
Participant
April 18, 2017
Question

Fillable forms on an iPad

  • April 18, 2017
  • 1 reply
  • 10575 views

I cannot get a fillable form, which works on a desktop and laptop, to work on an ipad.  The PDF downloads, but the fields that should be fillable, are not.  I have opened it in the adobe app.  I tried the Fill & Sign tool and got the following error "No supported document opened. This is a policy-protected PDF, which is not supported by the Fill & Sign tool."  The following link is where the form can be downloaded from.

Probate and Fiduciary Surety Bond Application - Meadowbrook Direct

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1 reply

A
Almasys
Inspiring
April 21, 2017

I am having a similar issue.  Weird thing is, everything was working beautifully until about 5 days ago.  I create a partially filled out fillable form, then upload it to MS OneDrive where one of my users opens it from their ipad and then "open in another app" to adobe reader.  They used to have no issues with dropdown boxes, text fields, etc. but now they cannot use the form anymore.  My business depends on this function and it has suffered since this capability has suddenly stopped working.

C
cetimmAuthor
Participant
April 21, 2017

I figured it out, though it isn't the best solution.  I had password protected the PDF, so that only the fillable fields were editable.  I didn't want people to be able to save the file and edit the formatting or questions.  It worked fine on a PC, but I had to get rid of the protection for the fillable fields to work on an ipad.  I couldn't even unlock it with the adobe app on the iPad, I have to unlock it on my PC, remove the protection, re-upload it to our website, and then it worked.

A
Almasys
Inspiring
April 24, 2017

My form wasn’t protected.


Jim,

Not sure how exactly you were using your adobe forms in conjunction with OneDrive, etc, but I have a 90% solutions (not 100% because of how easy it is for human error to mess it up...).

My issue was all of the sudden my ipad users were no longer able to pull the forms from OneDrive, open in Adobe reader and still have use of the fillable form functions.  The fields would be misaligned and the PDFs were "read-only".    This all started happening around the same time two things changed:  1) I incorporated using a "template" form that was saved to a O365 share site; and also OneDrive app for ipad was updated.  So, suffice to say I am not 100% which of those two things (or a combo of both) was responsible for the issue.

Regardless, here's how I've overcome this problem:   I now only upload fillable form PDFs from my desktop directly to MS OneDrive.  Also, when the ipad user goes to open the fillable form, he CANNOT allow OneDrive app to open the preview screen on it.  If he does, it will from that point on always appear as described above and read-only.   Instead, he has to ensure to tap and HOLD the file until the blue bar at the top and the blue check mark beside the file appear and then the three vertical dots in the upper right hand corner of OneDrive will appear to access the "open in another app" function.   If this protocol is followed, I've had no issue with adobe reader seeing the file as a fillable form.

If for some reason, the user screws up and allows OneDrive to open the PDF, Adobe Reader will also see the file as a "read-only."  The only thing you can do at that point is delete the file in adobe and OneDrive, then re-upload it into OneDrive and try again.

At least this seems to be the case for me so far.  I hope this works for you as well.

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