Checkbox height bug when exporting to interactive PDF

[Charles27377916c9ed]

Since the InDesign update to 21.0, exporting to interactive PDF (for a fillable form) has dramatically increased the height of checkboxes in the resulting PDF. This results in them overlapping each other (see image) and other odd behavior (for example: clicking the checkbox places the checkmark at the bottom of the box, which was its original location, but then after clicking out of the box, the checkmark moves up to be vertically centered within the now taller bounding box).

Radio buttons are also affected in the same way, but not normal input fields.

I've reverted InDesign to version 20.5, which fixed the issue for me.

[leo.r]

A similar bug in InDesign 2026 has been reported by another user recently.

Try to export the doc as IDML from InDesign 2026 - this may solve the issue.

[Charles27377916c9ed]

Thanks for your response. I didn't find another report on this specific issue, but I probably used the wrong search terms.

I've now resaved the document in InDesign 21.0 (InDesign 2026) as an IDML, re-opened the IDML in InDesign 2026 and then exported as an interactive PDF as normal. Unfortunately I'm still seeing the same double-height bounding boxes for checkboxes and radio buttons in the resulting PDF.

For now, I'll just keep using InDesign 20.5, which doesn't result in the oversize fields.

[BobLevine]

Buttons are affected but exporting to IDML fixes it and it only affects earlier version files opened in version 21. Buttons created in version 21 are fine.

[Charles27377916c9ed · Accepted solution]

Exporting to IDML did not fix it before (as I mentioned above). However, I went ahead and tried it again, this time exporting as IDML from 20.5, not 21.0. That did fix it.

I'm now able to use 21.0 as long as I export the files to IDML from 20.5 first.