Indesign Text Fields in a Table - not all are visible in Set Tab Order

[HH_Edin]

I'm working in CC 2017/2018. I have a multi-page document which is basically meant to mirror an excel spreadsheet (I know, I know but clients want what they want!).

It has lots of tables some of which break across pages. One table has 10 rows with multiple fields in it - some combo boxes, some text, some checkboxes. I've tried setting this up several ways - one with 'floating' text boxes embedded in the table and one where the table cells have been converted to graphic cells then made into fields. Both have the same problems. Due to the complexity of the tables I really don't want to have to set them up on a separate layer with no connection to the table.

My problem is that not all of these fields show up in the menu when you go to Object>Interactive>Set tab order. It's not consistent either. In one instance it shows a graphic cell conversion and a checkboxes - but only 1 out of 10 graphic cell text fields!

And I know I can fix this in Acrobat but it would be nice if it worked consistently in Indesign as this document gets reworked regularly with columns and rows being added/deleted.

Am I missing something obvious or is this part of the 'stacking order' glitch which I've seen in other posts?

Any help would be very appreciated!

[hammer0909]

Are you giving each interactive field a unique name? Remember when two fields have the same name, they'll get populated with the same information. Not sure if this would cause the problem that you are experiencing but it's a start.

[HH_Edin · Accepted solution]

Thanks for responding, they do all have different names. I ended up just doing all the work in Acrobat and praying that, at the next version, they don't add in or remove too many rows and columns!

[Laubender]

Hi HH_Edin ,

hm…

Next time you'll design something like this I would take away one level of complexity.

And that is the table with graphic cells.

For a different purpose I used graphic cells as basis for form fields and found that screen redraw was very sluggish, that the table became very unstable at one point of complexity, means InDesign was about to freeze or to crash. Maybe graphic cells were never intended to hold form fields? Just plain images…

Regards,
Uwe

[AndyQ]

There seems no other way to have a form field in a table, and tables are the ideal container for form fields and constructing layouts, and obviously essential for spreadsheet-like layouts in which some cells should be user input. I get exactly the same problem. It appears if you set up a table and create the form fields in cells then the tab order reflects the order of creation. You can also see the names of the fields in the "tab order" dialogue. But if any changes are made, even moving th table to another page or having it split over pages and the order gets screwed and some fields are lost forever in the "tab order" system. This applies NOT ONLY to table cell fields, but also fields that are in frames that  are nested in other frames. It seems any kind of layout structure messes up Indesign's ability to track the form fields - you have to just have them placed on the page "manually" without any flow-control structure. I've not done thorough testing but I've recently knocked out a few documents with multipage tables containing form fields (an order form, with product details and a user-filled "quantity" column)