Known Participant

Answered

Tab Order -- not maintaining order

Forum|Forum|4 years ago
June 25, 2021
3 replies
3691 views

I create detailed medical forms for my company, which require frequent updates. I name all form fields, checkboxes, and radio buttons and set the tab order. After making updates to a form, however, the tab order always re-shuffles. In particular, any radio buttons (and sometimes checkboxes and signature fields) drop to the bottom of the tab order list. Fixing the tab order after each form revision is a tediousness time suck.

Does anyone have a suggestion / plug-in to avoid this going forward? I appreciate the help!

How to

Correct answer Bevi Chagnon - PubCom.com

If I were to setup the form within Acrobat, wouldn't I need to redo that work (adding form fields and/or specifying tab order) after each time I generate an updated PDF from InDesign?
By @Meredith0404

That's correct, @Meredith0404. You'd have to rebuild the form parts each time you edited the PDF Form file. There are some tricks to make it a tad easier, but it's still a lousy, time-consuming workflow.

In your InDesign layout, are you controlling your reading orders? If so, which tools and techniques are you using to do that?

Threaded text threads for the visible skeleton portion of the form
Anchoring the form fields into the threaded text frames
Controlling the stacking order in the layers panel (bottom up: bottommost item is read first).

S

SLB_2484

Participant

DE-selecting "Use Structure for Tab Order" in the PDF Export dialog box fixes the random tab jumping problem!

barbara_a7746676

Community Expert

Once you complete the form in InDesign, it would be easier to set the tab order in Acrobat. Acrobat has much more robust forms features than InDesign has.

Bevi Chagnon - PubCom.com

Legend

Once you complete the form in InDesign, it would be easier to set the tab order in Acrobat. Acrobat has much more robust forms features than InDesign has.
By @barbara_a7746676

Nah. Disagree 100% with that!

I'm a professional forms designer and teach forms classes in all sorts of programs. I'm also an InDesign expert and designer, as well as an accessibililty expert.

Right now, InDesign has the easiest and most succefful form design tools.

But, to each his/her own tools! So use what you have and know.

|    Bevi Chagnon   |  Designer, Trainer, & Technologist for Accessible Documents ||    PubCom |    Classes & Books for Accessible InDesign, PDFs & MS Office |

Bevi Chagnon - PubCom.com

Legend

Thank you, this has been driving me mad!..InDesign needs to come up with a much better, less time consuming method! I had to do a lot of research to get it all working correctly adn your last post here really helped me.

Setting up in Layers, bottom first and then also setting up Articles fixed the tabbing order! Another lesson I learned...you need to close the pdf before exporting to a new pdf, in order to see what has been corrected.

Yes, close your PDF before re-exporting.

And also SAVE your INDD file before exporting, too. The save forces all of your changes to be made to the INDD file.

Glad to hear y'all are getting there!

|    Bevi Chagnon   |  Designer, Trainer, & Technologist for Accessible Documents ||    PubCom |    Classes & Books for Accessible InDesign, PDFs & MS Office |

Michael Bullo

Community Expert

Just wanted to confirm that all this is done in InDesign? Does Acrobat play a role in your process at all?

Meredith0404Author

Known Participant

That's correct Michael. I set up all form fields and the tab order within InDesign. The final output is an interactive PDF.

Sign up

To post, reply, or follow discussions, please sign in with your Adobe ID.

Sign in to Adobe Community

To post, reply, or follow discussions, please sign in with your Adobe ID.

Scanning file for viruses.

This file cannot be downloaded