Incremental search while typing in combobox?

Report · Mar 02, 2016

Hi guys,

I am creating a form to be given out to a large amount of managers to fill in multiple times, and because of the size of the organisation I work in we have over 500 different job titles and over 100 different departments. At the moment all of these are in 2 different comboboxes and finding the correct option is a drag. I found a PDF which had been created in Lifecycle that had this feature but I was unable to load up the JS and take a look for myself and add it into Acrobat Pro as it said I have to open it via Lifecycle.

I have searched for hours for a solution I could incorporate into my PDF but it seems it either not possible or no one has really requested it.

Does anyone know if such a thing is doable in Acrobat Pro with Javascript?

Report · Mar 02, 2016

What exactly do you want to achieve? It's not clear from your description...

Report · Mar 02, 2016

Hi,

Sorry about that I didn't proof read it.

I want it so that when you start typing in letters into the combobox it automatically starts filtering the dropdown with items which contain the letters, so for instance for finance. If I searched for fin it would show the finance as well as any other departments which have the letter combination of fin in them.

Report · Mar 02, 2016

OK, that's more clear. I don't think it's possible to do it with just a drop-down menu, though. You can do it using a separate text field that acts as the filter.

This requires using a script, of course.

I've developed a product that allows you to easily set up such a filter field. If you're interested you can purchase it from here: Custom-made Adobe Scripts: Acrobat -- Create Live Filtered List

Report · Mar 02, 2016

Note that dropdowns in XFA forms (LiveCycle) behave the way you want without any scripting. Dropdowns in Acrobat don't behave that way, but you can cycle through the items that begin with a particular character by repeatedly pressing that character on the keyboard. Not exactly what you're looking for, but it might be helpful.

Report · Mar 14, 2016

I did see that feature, unfortunately I need it so that others are able to edit the form and keep all scripting/fields etc.. who do not have Livecycle installed. I supposed they will have to live with it for now.