Acrobat Forms Wizard doesn't do all of the form

[dglarson]

I often have the experience of using forms wizard in acrobat to create an acrobat form from an existing document and the wizard fails to find all of the "fill-able" fields.

As an example, just today I took a patient information intake document that a local doctor had posted on his clinic's website. This document was a PDF but it was simply a "print it then fill it out by hand and turn it in" type of form. So after downloading it to my PC, I started Acrobat and forms wizard. I estimate that the form contained about 60 fields and Acrobat's forms wizard failed to see about 25% of those fields. Most of the missed fields were check boxes but some were text boxes.

In the 8 years I have had Acrobat, this has been my experience the vast majority of the time and the percentage of fields missed varies but is usually around 20% to 25%. I end up having to edit the built form to add the remaining fields. This can be quite time consuming.

Anyone have ideas on how to improve the Acrobat forms wizard so it picks up more of the fields?

Specs

Windows 7, Pro 64-bit

Acrobat 9.5.2

[try67 · Accepted solution]

There's nothing you can do to change how it works. You can only change how you create your files to accommodate for its idiosyncrasies.

It might also be a good idea to upgrade to a newer version of Acrobat, as it might work better there.

[David Koegel]

I am having the same problems.  is there an option to have the program rescan a second time and find what it missed the first time around?

[try67]

No.

I did develop some (paid-for) tools that will pick up form fields for you, though, and they work 100% of the time, unlike the form fields detection wizard. You can find them here:

http://try67.blogspot.com/2020/04/acrobatreader-convert-underscores-to.html

http://try67.blogspot.com/2015/09/acrobatreader-convert-wingdings-to.html

[JR Boulay]

You should see these tutos (episodes 52 & 53): https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-indesigner/id96779509

[JR Boulay]

"Acrobat 9.5.2"

You should update to its latest version: 9.5.5

(Help menu : Check updates)