Text Field Spacing

[kimlynn]

In Acrobat, I designed a pdf with editable text fields.  I enabled rich text editing. When using Reader DC to fill in the text field, if a smaller font then what I set as the text field default is selected it will double space the horizontal lines of text, even if single spacing is selected.  Why is this happening?  

[try67]

You can't set the Spacing setting for the field, just for specific text in it. When the field is cleared it will revert to the default value.

[kimlynn]

Thank you for your reply.  The problem I am encountering is with the specific text within the field.  When a user fills in several lines of text and changes {using cntrl + E} the font size to a small size, like 12 pt., the lines of text entered as single spaced then jump to double spacing when selecting print or save.   I can't seem to find a way around this!

[ls_rbls]

That shouldn't happen if you've enabled multi-line in that field.

If you have enabled multi-line in conjunction with the Rich-text property option and still get this problem I can think of a few possibilities:

• Make sure that you're not copying rich text formatted in another program (like MS Word, for example) and pasting it onto this field.
• Pasting text from another program into this field will also inherit spacing properties that are not included as a feature in Acrobat for the text field properties when using Rich-Text.
• However, when you open the "Form Field Text Properties" toolbar while editing the text inside of that field, notice the button that is labeled "MORE".
• Clicking on that button   will open up the Text Field Properties dialogue window.
• There are two tabs of interest to work around your issue: "Font" and the "Paragraph" tabs.
• In the Font tab see the blank provided labeled "Baseline Shift"; you may type in a number greater than zero; it is measured in points.
• And in tbe Paragraph tab is where you can handle spacing directly for your paragraphs.

In any case, If you've already tried any of these built-in features without success, I would suggest to delete that textfield and re-create a new one from scratch following the suggestion of  Adobe Community MVP try67.

And worst case scenario, ensure that this PDF was entirely produced with Adobe Acrobat and is not a file conversion to PDF from a different source software. Otherwise, if you think this could be related to a file conversion error, see if the problem gets resolved by recreating the form from scratch.

If, on the other hand, Acrobat was working fine before, and this is happening all of a sudden with every PDF (not just the one you're currently fixing), try clicking on Help --->>> Repair Installation.

[kimlynn]

Thank you for your reply - I really appreciate it!  

Yes, I created this pdf in Adobe Acrobat and I did enable multi-line and rich text editing.  This pdf is a set of labels that can be filled in with custom information.  When I created it, for each text field - in this case label - I set a default font style, color and size.  I enabled the Cntrl+E feature so that the user could select their own font style, color and size to fill in the label with their information.   That is where the problem is occuring...if the default font is used, and single line spacing is selected, it stays as a single line spacing when selecting Print or Save - but when a smaller font size is selected, the single line spacing jumps to double spacing after selecting Print or Save.

I have tried all of the built in features - {thank you for your explanation of each! What exactly is baseline shift? I don't know how I would use it for whole lines of text in a paragraph?}

I wonder why it only happens with selecting a smaller font?

[ls_rbls]

here's a good brief article that explains in detail what is the baseline shift attribute in typography and how it is used.

• https://www.fonts.com/content/learning/fyti/using-type-tools/baseline-shift

In your particular case, You can use baseline shift by selecting the line of text that you need to move up or down.

In the blank provided you enter a number that is equivalent to a small increment measured in points.

I don't think this will be very useful to troubleshoot the textfield object as whole but rather a workaround for each line of text that you may need to fix.

Again, the baseline shift doesn't focus on line spacing; it focuses on the characters of the text that you've selected. The characters are shifted up or down in relation to the baselines.

Another suggestion that I can think of is to change the Font type to something like Times New Roman or Arial and see if you observe the same problem.

[kimlynn]

Thank you for your response and the link!  Very helpful article and yes I see now how baseline shift works.  You are correct, it does allow raising the line of text - A good workaround but I think it will be too difficult to explain to my users how to do this if they have used the smaller fonts.

I did try Arial and Times New Roman and I have encountered the same problem. Thank you so much for your time with this problem!

[ls_rbls]

You're welcome.