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Participant
June 9, 2020
Answered

PDF fillable form not displaying field data

  • June 9, 2020
  • 31 replies
  • 208530 views

Greetings, 

I have an employee who is receiving fillable PDF forms for work via email. When opening file preview on the form within Outlook Desktop the form is displayed and the field data is in the fields designated. When opening the PDF with Reader or Acrobat Pro the forms field data is blank. Clicking on fields to highlight test does not reveal anything, and trying to insert a space and delete the space within the field nothing is revealed. When opening the file with MS Edge, all the forms field data is then viewable. I have another employee that was able to open the same form using their Acrobat XI and was able to view the field data as well. With opening the PDF's via Edge, we are able to print form to MS Print to PDF and upon doing so and opening with Reader or Acrobat Pro the form data is viewable.  I have checked the versions of Reader and Acrobat Pro and both are up to date as well. Any suggestions are greatly appreciated.

Correct answer try67

This is usually the fault of the application used to fill in the form, most likely Apple Preview, MS Reader or one of the browser plugins. Instruct the users to only use Adobe Reader and it should work fine.

31 replies

Participating Frequently
June 12, 2020

Having a similar issue: Upon opening the PDF in Acrobat Reader (ver. 2020.009.20067) the form fields are blank. But, in our case, if you click in a field location, the data shows up - only for that one field.
Another interesting discovery is if you zoom the window (in any direction) everything suddenly appears.  Very strange. 

NOTES: We received the document from someone else but the properties reveal the following: 
Application: Acrobat PDFMaker 20 for Word. 
PDF Producer:  Adobe PDF Library 20.9.95
PDF Version is:   1.6 (Acrobat 7.x)

I have played with different settings in Adobe Reader, but do not want to spend a lot of time on this. I have the feeling it will be fixed with a software revision: Either Adobe Reader or Acrobat PDFMaker 20 for Word???