Form Fields Showing and Printing Duplicate (Ghosted, Doubled)

[WowAdobeCool]

Someone at our organization created a PDF with fillable form to send out. Some of them come back normal, but some come back showing the text entered in the fields duplicated or ghosted. I checked the original and there are no duplicated fields.

On my own computer, they look normal in Acrobat Reader, but when I print them all of the fields text is doubled, impossible to read.

The user can manually delete the text if they highlight and click delete.

[WowAdobeCool]

A new discovery. When I click on the field to fill it, I can see the duplicate text pop up.

After I change or delete the content of the field, the duplicate text does not change. It disappears when I click outside of the field, but when I print the PDF it shows both the text I entered in the field and the old duplicated text.

[try67]

You do have multiple overlapping fields, then.

[WowAdobeCool]

Nope. If I delete the field entirely, the duplicate text disappears. Wish I could upload the form to prove it, but the document contains sensitive data and there is no way to delete it without deleting the entire field.

[WowAdobeCool]

Another weird thing I just discovered: if I delete the field, then restore it with Undo (ctrl+z), then type in new text, the problem disappears for that field only.

[George_Johnson]

See if you can find out what software they used to fill-in and save the form. My guess is it's not Adobe Reader or Acrobat.

[WowAdobeCool]

I'm starting to think this is the problem. I'll try to find out but it's difficult. The form is sent out to thousands of people and just randomly come back like this.

The people filling out the forms know nothing about computers, they are not employees, and probably have no idea which program they used to fill it. I'm expecting 100% of them to say "I have no idea, just opened it and sent it back filled out."

[George_Johnson]

You might be able to tell by seeing what Acrobat shows in the following when you open one of the problematic forms:

File > Properties > Description (tab) > Advanced > PDF Producer

See if it's different than the original blank form.

[George_Johnson]

Also, if you have Acrobat, you can try exporting the form data to a data file (FDF) and importing it into a blank form.

[WowAdobeCool]

I tried this and the form data indeed imports back into the blank form without any duplicates.

I'll pass this along as a workaround for the users for now.

[try67 · Accepted solution]

That's a clear indication that it was indeed filled in using something like Apple Preview (which is known to corrupt PDF forms in this way), Microsoft Reader, or something similar, like a browser PDF plugin...

[WowAdobeCool]

Yep, that seems to be the issue. Thanks for your help guys!

[Jellob99]

That was not my solution as everything was done by me from InDesign to Acrobat Pro. BUT, somehow, in Acrobat, the fields were indeed duplicated (but not in InDesign!) It's weird since the only thing I have done is to select each text field to change the alignment property to "center". I never copied or even moved a field in Acrobat. And now I can't replicate the issue. Anyway, I just saw that at the bottom of the field tab in Acrobat, I could see the duplicates, with a #1 suffix. I just deleted them all and it's fine now.

[Corinne38669484h45q]

Hi there! I am running into this issue of duplicating text and I am sending documents out to clients so I don't have control over what technology they use to fill out the form. I was looking to try this method, but I don't see FDF as an option under export. I attached a picture of the options it gives me. I tried "save as" to see if it was an option under that as well and it was not. Do you know the best way to go about exporting a PDF? I prefer to have printed copies of all these forms but my clients tend to fill them out on their phones (iOS) and I am stumped on the best course of action.

[Jellob99]

You need to open the "Prepare a form" tool. Then you'll have the "..." button in which you'll see Export data.

[Jellob99]

...but this messed up all the buttons design. Would be much more efficient if InDesign could format the form fields properly in the first place, without relying on Acrobat to fix a few things (not properly either!)

[Joseph33768339ye46]

I know this issue has been discussed here and other forums - specifially, iOS user signing and the result is ghosted images and no way to adjust the forms or even export without it still showing the duplicated / ghosted images. The solution is rightfully: hope users avoid the Quartz / iOS Preview / etc. However, if that's not an option: I had some gritty success viewing the file full screen (after adjsuting font size, etc. - things that might give interfact stuff like a plus sign) and then screen capturing it. Bigger / higher resultion screen the better. In my case, I was working with a lease and it's still tough. But we have enough now to print and proceed! 

[Vera N.]

I have this trouble occasionally when someone emails me a form they've completed.  It's a form that I created, and I *KNOW* for a fact that the original form does not have duplicated fields or fields with identical names as I'm very careful when creating fillable forms not to do either of those things.  I've found that, if I go through and delete the text in every field that has doubling/shadow duplication, save the file, then save it again as an optimized PDF with form fields flattened (which I need to do before uploading it for signatures anyway), the form displays and prints as one would expect it to, without the doubled ghost text.  However, if you save it as an optimized document with flattened fields *before* deleting the text, it will display both sets of text (making it unreadable).  In fact, this is how I usually find out that this issue exists.  I suspect that in these cases, the form is being filled out in some third party application that is somehow breaking the form by duplicating every field that is typed into.  The latest one I received shows the PDF Producer as "iOS Version 17.6.1 (Build 21G93) Quartz PDFContext" so I'm assuming this person filled it out on their iPhone or iPad or similar Apple product.  I've attached a screenshot of the most recent instance of this (the red blockouts are where the student's name, phone number, and email address are).  Interestingly, the signature field is the only field which doesn't show this weird duplication.

[braden_6737]

CORRECT ANSWER:  Adobe should get off its high horse and create a platform that works for all users, whether they have acrobat or not.  Kind of a useless platform/software if it can't let people use or view docs without problems unless they have thier proprotary tech installed...  Also, Apple i to blame here for the exact same reasons.

CORRECT SOLUTION:  Use Google products.