Interactive fields not showing in browsers

[Willarino]

I will say my company is on a controlled release of INDD and not 100% whatever is the latest in the cloud. I am on CC 2024 v 19.0.1.

Interactive PDF Forms look/render fine when exporting out of Adobe InDesign, when opening and viewing in Adobe Acrobat. When that same PDF is then opened in the browser (Edge or Chrome) the form fields do not render. Not even the outlines of the checkboxes. I attached a very basic example.

InDesign files I've managed over the years used to output input fields that worked in browsers, but If I open that same InDesign file now and export a PDF, those interactive fields will now break in browser.

It seems it is easily fixable in Adobe Acrobat by opening the file, going to Prepare Form and changing basically anything in the properties. You can change one property on one form field, save, and it will fix the whole document. You can do this in the basic example attached. I've changed the Name of an input and various things in the Appearance, and all seem to fix the document.

I can't figure out any InDesign export setting to change to correct this problem. I am trying to avoid correcting the issue Acrobat as an added step for every iteration of the form that is saved.

[Mike Witherell]

Did you set the PDF with Save As Other > Reader Extended PDF > Enable More Tools ?

[Willarino]

I am not quite sure what was going on, but a few hours after I posted, my company pushed an update to all computers, and that particular problem no longer existed. I wasn't able to troubleshoot it any more. Everything works as intended now, without changing anything. Thanks for your input though!

[BobLevine]

Discussed many times here and elsewhere; When you export you will note that you are exporting Adobe PDF...anything other than Acrobat or Reader is a crapshoot and browsers are particularly non-compliant with interactive PDF.

I'm sorry, but there is quite literally nothing you can do to guarantee these files will work anywhere but Acrobat or Reader.

If you need a form to work in a browser, create a proper web form.