Form fields not printing

[Guest]

I've created an interactive form from a word document in Reader, but I'm having trouble printing it.

When I print the document the regular text all prints, but only some of the text fields print. In the print dialog I select print Document and Markups, so as far as I can tell everything should be printing. Interestingly, every time I print the same specific text fields always print out, and the rest are always blank... so it seems arbitrary, but not completely so.

If I print from Preview everything comes out fine, but I'd still like to know what I'm doing wrong in Reader.

I'm running Adobe Reader 7.0 on mac OS X 10.4.11

Thanks!

- Ryan

[Ozzwoman9]

Not sure what capabilities you have in Reader, but when creating the form fields perhaps they were set to Read Only or Visible But Doesn't Print.

[Guest]

All the text fields have their common property "Text Field" set to Visible. In fact, looking at a random field that does print and one that does not, I can see no difference in their properties.

All of them have "Field Value is not validated" and "Value is not calculated" in the validate and calculate tabs. I don't know what those mean, could that be the problem?

Thanks for your help!

- Ryan

[Ozzwoman9]

Again, working with Acrobat 9 Pro here, not sure what options you have in Reader.

Here's a screen shot of my options and my suggestions.

Should be set to Visible. Do you possibly have the read only to the right checked?

I would suggest going back through and comparing the properties of those that are printing to those that aren't. Could it be that you have some fields setup as buttons and maybe others as text fields or something of that sort that could be causing issues?

[Guest]

Thanks again for taking the time to look at my problem. I'm silly, when I said I was using Reader 7.0, I meant Acrobat 7.0 Professional!

The options I have for all my text fields are the same (same with ones that print, and ones that don't), I'll list them here:

General: Names are generic ie Text1, Text2 etc. Tooltip blank. Form Field Visible. Read Only and Required are not checked, 0 degree orientation.

Appearance: Seems unrelated.

Options: Scroll Long Text, and Check Spelling both checked. The rest unchecked: Multiline, Allow RTF, Limit of X characters, Password, File Selection, Comb of X characters.

No Actions are set up.

I've confirmed they're all text fields. I have checkboxes in the document as well, and those all print fine. It seems to only be the text fields giving me trouble, and their properties are exactly the same according to the Text Field Properties dialog box and my powers of observation.

This error has occurred on multiple computers and multiple printers, so it appears to be a problem with the document.

On a possibly related note: My text fields all had "auto" selected for Font Size in the Appearance window, and when it came back from the client they're all at 12, making some text too large for the field. Could all these problems be due to something the client did with the PDF?

[JasonGoveas · Accepted solution]

We had the same problem with a form. Field contents only showed when "Hightlight fields" was selected.  The fields were set to Visible but a blank form printed or just the contents if that was selected from the Print menu.

However, we fixed it - The fields we had were set to No Colour which we presumed would mean white.

Select field Properties.

Select Appearance.

Set Border Colour to whatever you want.

Set Fill Colour to white.

For the Border and Fill select any colour as long as it contrasts with text and is NOT set to No Colour.

Jason Goveas

[Guest]

Yes! Thank you!

I had it set to no color fill based on the same assumption. Changed it to white and now all fields print.

Thank you!!!

[bbrkw]

Hi,

I don't know if it's ok to add to an old thread, but for what it's worth, I had the same problem and solved it by explicitly setting a font for all affected fields (Properties / Appearance; for whatever reason it worked (i.e. the fields were printed) after assigning Helvetica).

Cheers,

BB