Text-box tool gone?

[braydon]

Has the text-box tool that used to be in the 'Fill & Sign' panel been removed? I haven't been able to find it since the update, it's very frustrating.

I'm running the full version of Acrobat DC. I know I can go into the Edit Page tab and sometimes I'm able add text boxes, depending on how the document is formatted (but not always). But this is not what I'm wanting to do. How do I find the olod tool I was familiar with?

[Abambo · Accepted solution]

Is this the tool you are looking for?

[braydon]

It is. Thanks you! But it is extremely weird - sometimes that button is there, sometimes it's not. Perhaps it's how the document has been saved, before I've recieved it. Eg. however the author has set the edit permissions? I encountered a bunch of documents in a row where that button just wasn't there, and started to think the function had been removed. But I checked on a documented I'd authored, and it is there. Confusing and frustrating!

[Abambo]

The new interface is full of surprises. You could test this by locking own documents and seeing how it evolves. 

[OneSkyWalker]

Thanks braydon.

Like you, I believe that recent updates to Adobe Acrobat Reader might have made changes to the availability of the Fill & Sign text box.

Rather than looking for the text box tool in the left panel, I use Tools > Fill & Sign to open the Fill & Sign toolbar and look for the text box option in the toolbar:

In the screenshot above, the text box option is circled in red. (The Tools option, used to reach Fill & Sign and open the toolbar, is in the green ellipse.)

For some documents, I see no text box option in the toolbar.

In some cases, File > Document Properties shows:

It is easy to understand why there would be no text box option in the toolbar with such a document.

But in other cases, File > Document Properties shows that 'Filling of Form Fields' is Allowed, yet there is no textbox option in the toolbar!?!!

The Adobe Acrobat 'Fill in PDF forms' help (at https://helpx.adobe.com/acrobat/using/filling-pdf-forms.html) says, "Not all forms are fillable. Sometimes form creators don’t convert their PDFs to interactive fillable forms. Or, they intentionally design a form that you can fill in only by hand or with the Fill & Sign tool. These non-interactive forms are called flat forms."

I am using the free version of Adobe Acrobat Reader 24.002.20687 (the current level) on Windows 10 Pro 22H2.

I have a document that is an interactive form (in which the author has defined the fields to be filled in). For that document, File > Document Properties shows that 'Filling of Form Fields' is Allowed, yet there is no textbox option in the toolbar.

Perhaps that is true of all documents which are interactive forms, but it seems to me that the text box option used to be available even with interactive forms. That was helpful in situations (which were not uncommon) where the author of an interactive form forgot to make fillable one or more fields which needed to be filled in.

Perhaps the Adobe Acrobat Reader has been updated recently so that it no longer presents the text box option with interactive forms.

[MDennison]

Can you have a border around a text box?  You could in previous version, but I have not been able to since this last upgrade.

[MDennison]

Finally found it.  Now called "Add text comment".  Hope this helps.

[1Ronegade]

Sorry, but that's NOT it.  The old text box allowed one to show a border around text, the text comment does not.  The box around text made it easy to really highlight a comment in a document to be returned to the originator.  The borderless text is much easier to miss unless one uses really obnoxious colors. 

IMHO;  this was a big miss by Adobe to lose that functionality.

[Marcus111_]

This is a considerable loss in productivity to remove quick and easy border and background adjustments to text box. Please bring it back into the comment tool.

[1Ronegade]

A recent update brought this back. 

Now called "Add a Text comment with a border."

Thanks, Adobe.

[colleen_5031]

That adds border, but if you are placing a comment over an image it does not allow you to fill the background with white. Any solution for that? 

[1Ronegade]

Colleen:  Agree.  There is no option to apply a fill to the box.  Another miss for Adobe?