Font formatting lost in Editable PDF - Especially Line Height (Indesign 17.1, MacOS 12.2.1)

[uncouthmike]

Hi all,

When creating a PDF (such as a certificate, or printable signage) so that the client can edit the text themselves, Indesign is unexpectedly missing some functionality in terms of retaining contact (default value) and formatting (font, size, colour, alignment, and line-spacing). This functionality seems to have disappeared in a recent update as it definitely used to carry across to the PDF.

To reproduce the issue, I convert a text box to a text field using the Buttons & Forms palette, and previously could simply export it and have an editable field that preserved the default text values, colour, etc as above. and now have to reset the font name, size again in the palette, and export to PDF, then edit in Acrobat, Prepare Form, double-click the editable field, use Appear... tab to fix the text colour up, and Options tab to set the alignment, and type in the default value again. However, appears to be no option to set the line height to what it should be - you are stuck with the default lineheight for the font, which can be problematic especially with multline forms to keep things looking as you want them.

Reducing functionality is a very annoying bug!

1. Is there a way to set a different line height in an editable PDF text field?

2. Will this functionality be returned/expanded so that you don't have to make the changes again in Acrobat, but can go straight from Indesign to an interactive form? (Or is there some setting I am missing?)

[Eugene Tyson]

I'm not familiar with the button functions.

You're best chance to get this looked at it is here

Report bugs or make a feature request
https://www.adobe.com/products/wishform.html

[uncouthmike]

Thanks Eugene, if I don't get a resolution here I will definitely post it as a bug. Being able to make correctly-formatted font-embedded editable PDFs is definitely a boon to give clients who need to produce customised text on the fly without destroying the appearance by trying to do it in Word or something. Worth checking out, as long as it works 😄

[Laubender]

"When creating a PDF (such as a certificate, or printable signage) so that the client can edit the text themselves, Indesign is unexpectedly missing some functionality in terms of retaining contact (default value) and formatting (font, size, colour, alignment, and line-spacing). This functionality seems to have disappeared in a recent update as it definitely used to carry across to the PDF."

Hi Mike,

can you show us a sample where this happens?

A sample from a previous version of InDesign where this worked and the same sample in the most recent version where it does not work. Best put it on Dropbox or a similar service and post the download link.

Thanks,
Uwe Laubender

( ACP )

[uncouthmike]

Thanks Uwe.

Here's a file I set up in Indesign late in 2020, it previously created a PDF with the correct formatting for the text field:

https://www.dropbox.com/s/c1u70so7693f87f/RM%20Certificate%20-%20Form%20PDF.indd?dl=0

as you can see in the PDF generated here:

https://www.dropbox.com/s/ii941mvovc6icrx/RM%20Certificate%20-%20editable%20NAME%20AND%20DATE.pdf?dl...

I keep Indesign automatically up to date, so I would have been using the current verson as of 5 Dec 2020. I am 99% sure that I had to take no further steps in Acrobat for the formatting to be correct - and you can see that the name field contains default text, is correctly set to blue, and centre-aligned.

If I open the same file in Indesign and export to Interactive PDF with Indesign 17.1, this is the PDF I get:

https://www.dropbox.com/s/7325wp67590xmvv/RM%20Certificate%20-%20editable%20NAME%20AND%20DATE%20Feb%...

If you open it in Preview or Acrobat, you'll see that the name is now blank, and if you click and type in the field, it shows the correct font, but it's black and left aligned. It's lost the colour, alignment, default text and apparently the lineheight too, although it's not visible in this particular file because it's a single line.

[Laubender]

Hi Mike,

inspected your InDesign document and your exported PDF files.

I'm sure that it never worked in previous versions of InDesign to export the default text of a form field text box.

The news is, that with InDesign 2021 and above, the right formatting information for the font style is exported.

In contrast to e.g. InDesign 2015 where this was not the case.

Could it be that you did this previously using an InDesign script like FormMaker or FormMagic?

You still could test it with the trial version, I think. See:

https://www.id-extras.com/products/formmaker/

All tests done with InDesign 2021 and 2015 on Windows 10.

Downloaded the missing fonts from Google Fonts. Made them available through a Document fonts folder.

Regards,
Uwe Laubender

( ACP )

[uncouthmike]

Hi Uwe, that's very strange, because I definitely exported the first PDF in Dec 2020 as you can tell from the creation date, and I have no recollection of opening it in Acrobat and editing it's behaviour in the way that I need to do it now in 2022.

The news is, that with InDesign 2021 and above, the right formatting information for the font style is exported.

Sorry, are you saying that you did an export from my Indesign file using Indesign 2021 and the fonts came out correctly formatted? Because this is NOT happening for me with 17.1 - as previously stated the text is coming out aligned left, black, and with the default line height.

No, I have not used FormMaker or FormMagic.

So it's still a mystery.

[uncouthmike]

Would you mind sharing your output PDF file? Maybe it's a Mac-only bug.

[Laubender]

Mike said: "Sorry, are you saying that you did an export from my Indesign file using Indesign 2021 and the fonts came out correctly formatted?"

The font and the font style was right with an exported PDF from InDesign 2021 when I typed in the form's text field. Not the color, not the justification to center. That defaults to black and left aligned.

The default text did not show.

Have to repeat my tests with InDesign 2022.

I will also do a test with InDesign CS6…

Here two links to my test PDFs I exported from InDesign 2015 and 2022 where I already typed something in with Adobe Reader:

https://www.dropbox.com/s/sn8foxb0uqshrdy/RM%20Certificate%20-%20Form%20PDF-EDITED-2015-Interactive-...

https://www.dropbox.com/s/0f9hatoi4o19pgx/RM%20Certificate%20-%20Form%20PDF-EDITED-2021-Interactive-...

Regards,
Uwe Laubender

( ACP )

[uncouthmike]

OK, thanks for confirming, so like I said, the alignment and colour do not come across to the form. I'll file this as a bug.