Participant

Question

Designing a document > Export to Interactive PDF > Client Uses as Template in Acrobat

Forum|Forum|7 months ago
June 2, 2025
4 replies
608 views

I have been using Adobe products for *decades*
Why is creating interactive documents like beating my head against a brick wall?
What am I missing?

I have my beautiful document set up. I put my text boxes on a seperate layer. The font, size, leading, colour, alignment are all set. I go to forms and buttons and select "Text Field" (Printable, required, multiline, scrollable) Reset the Font and Font size. I go to my exported PDF and there are giant red boxes. No sample text, no Lorem Ipsum, no roll over description, and when I type... all my type settings are borked.

Why?
Is there a way to do this from Illustrator instead?
Am I missing some kind of critical document that outlines how to work around these things?
The whole design field has changed and I need to make things that are editable client-side.
If anyone can point me in a direction that details how to force design minutia into "form fields" or similar I would really appreciate it.

JR Boulay

Community Expert

Be sure to open the PDF with Acrobat, not with a browser or with Apple Preview (aka "the PDF killer").

Acrobate du PDF, InDesigner et Photoshopographe

J

jj733270Author

Participant

Thank you for confirming it's like wrestling two apps at once, that was completely my impression.

BobLevine

Community Expert

I think you're expecting interactive PDF to act like some kind of replacement for a proper design tool. Others have tried this. It invariably fails. This is not, and never was, the way forms were designed to work.

If you insist on it, then I suggest checking out this tool: FormMagic – Id-Extras.com. Alternatively, learn how to utilize Acrobat for its more advanced features.

J

jj733270Author

Participant

I'm just trying to have my designed content, retain its design details in the Acrobat environment. When we are talking about a Design Corporation's tools, it isn't unreasonable to expect them to work together.
Thanks for the link.
What do you mean by "learn how to use Acrobat for it's more advanced features"?
I started this whole adventure in Acrobat, using the advanced features. Then discovered that ID > Acrobat was supposed to be the correct workflow.

Just because you have "expert" flair doesn't mean you have to be condescending in the process.

BobLevine

Community Expert

I'm sorry if you found it condesending but it is indeed very unreasonable to expect something that is not supposed to work the way you want to work the way you want.

To repeat what I've already said, this is not what forms are for. They are not a replacement for a proper design template. InDesign forms tools are fine for a basic form but for more advanced features you'll need to open the form in Acrobat and finish up there. That's the workflow. You need both and it's likely you'll never be totally satisfied with the result since PDFs are not responsive.

What if one design needs one line of text but another needs ten? Then what? I'm trying to save you some aggravation but again, if you insist, I suggest trying out FormMagic. I believe it's free for a one page form. That will at least let you know if it's what you need.

Abhishek Rao

Community Manager

Hi @jj733270,

Thanks for reaching out, and I completely understand how frustrating this must be. To help look into this further, could you please share which version of InDesign you're using and the details of your operating system? Also, does this issue happen with every file or just a specific one?

If you're able to share a sample screenshot showing the difference between what you designed in InDesign and what shows up in the exported PDF, or even a small screen recording of your workflow, that would really help us better understand what's going on and guide you accordingly.

Moreover, please go through the suggestions shared by @rechard_8952 and let us know how it goes.

Looking forward to your update!

Abhishek

J

jj733270Author

Participant

You ask these questions like there is an actual solution to the problem I'm experiencing.
Do you mean to tell me that there IS a way to retain all type settings moving from ID to PDF? And that my sample text is supposed to transfer to the interactive PDF version? (as indicated in Adobe documentation) And there is supposed to be a tooltip on rollover (that I insert the text for) as indicated in Adobe documentation?

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