Form recognition not working for check boxes

[gabrielm76646667]

When I use the form recognition function wizard on a pdf document, it has a hard time recognizing checkboxes.  Most times I need to add them manually.  Is there anything I can do to solve this?

[try67 · Accepted solution]

If you create the file in Word or InDesign you can use the Wingdings font for the check-boxes and then this script I've developed to automatically convert them to check-box fields in Acrobat: Custom-made Adobe Scripts: Acrobat/Reader -- Convert Wingdings To Fields

[gkaiseril]

The check boxes and radio buttons need to be large enough and border thick enough for the wizard to recognize the field. You can manually add them. Even wien recognized you will still need to edit them if they are in an exclusionary group.

[JR Boulay]

You should make them bigger.

See this great tuto (episodes 53 and 54), it's about InDesign but these good practices are available for any authoring software : The InDesigner » Podcasts-Video

[charlesandreo23045163]

Im using google sheet with the "checkbox" tool . Than im converting my google sheet to PDF. And it doesnt detect my checkbox. Its must it should !!!!

[stefanol35928414]

HI everyone, I know this question has been answered, but I figured I'd put my two cents in so to speak. I have been using LibreOffice/OpenOffice for years to create fill-in PDF forms. It seems to work flawlessly and no need to use Adobe Acrobat for the actual creation as you simply create the PDF straight from LibreOffice writer. However, I have used Acrobat to edit and make certain modifications to the PDF such as signature fields and the like.

[mv99761566]

Problem here too with Prepare Form. I have an existing form with fields and tick boxes (the circular checkboxes) that can not be filled. After View > Tools > Prepare form the fields are found and converted to fillable fields but the tick boxes (circles) are still not working. I can't find an answer here either: Create forms using Acrobat (adobe.com)

[creeloper27]

I had the same problem, from my limited testing I found out that the checkboxes are not getting recognized most of the times because the distance between the checkbox and the text is too large, I have highlighted the distances in an attached example image to better show the distances that are ok (in green) and the distances that are too long (in red) and do not allow the checkbox to be recognised.

If you make that distance shorter they should get recognised (this should be the same with square bullets, word control boxes, square characters and square shapes given they have a margin thick enought for the detection algorithm's likings)

I usually personally make forms with a giant table in word with invisible borders to format and place everything, I then make the bottom border of a cell visible (any color seems to work) to make that cell a writable text field (I know you can also put underscores but that approach gives less refined results from my experience), to make it a checkbox field I usually add the word checkbox in the table cell.
In both cases you need to make sure that the distance between the text describing the text field/checkbox and the text field/checkbox is as short as possible (as shown in the example image).

Another small trick if you are using the "table method" and you can't get the cell with the text describing the text field/checkbox and the text field/checkbox close enough to get detected is to hold "alt" while moving the line separating the 2 cells to get more fine control, if that is not enought either you can trick word into moving the line closer by adding an empty row below and then after that another empty row (2 rows down) where you add with the table drawing tool a line that is slightly closer than your original one, you can then move the original one and it should snap to the temporary one you created below without making the text describing the text field/checkbox go to a new line in its cell.

In conclusion I would say Adobe seriously needs to improve their automatic form detection/creation algortihms and make things like this invisible maximum detection distance configurable by the user, they should also add support for things like multiline text fields and others.

[creeloper27]

What the heck, community.adobe.com does not allow neither deleting nor editing your own posts? Huh?

Anyway, I wanted to clarify a few things:

- with "word control boxes" I actually meant "word checkboxes", if have never used them this is how you use them: https://www.howtogeek.com/204036/how-to-add-check-boxes-to-word-documents/

- this is a tweaked answer of mine from another similar thread elsewhere: https://acrobat.uservoice.com/forums/590923-acrobat-for-windows-and-mac/suggestions/19601791-square-... (cool how the unofficial forums allow you to edit and delete your posts while the official abobe ones do not allow either of them)