saved PDF form opens blank

[BenjyvC]

I'm using Mac OS Sierra, having an issue with filling a PDF form, then opening it blank. If I click into a given cell that had values saved to it, that saved value actually displays, but the rest of the page remains blank until I click into the next cell. The form also prints with each cell blank. Anybody else having this issue? Thanks in advance.

[George_Johnson · Accepted solution]

Lots of people have had that issue over the years. It's most often happens when Preview is used to fill-in and save the form. Preview has really bad support for PDF forms and corrupts PDFs in a number of ways when it saves them. It's reasonable to say that Preview should never be used to work with PDF forms.

What you can do is open the corrupted form in Acrobat, export the form data to an FDF, and open the original blank and uncorrupted form and import the data form the FDF. The exact steps depend on which version of Acrobat you're using.

[BenjyvC]

That makes sense, was able to open back up in Preview (indeed edited there) and everything showed. I'll avoid this by pointing the helper application for any PDF to Distiller. Big thanks!

[George_Johnson]

You can set Acrobat or Reader to be the default PDF viewer, as opposed to Distiller.