Placeholder Text Feature for InDesign

[tzaharia79]

Perhaps there is a feature and I just haven't come across it. 

Seeing as InDesign has interactive PDFs in mind giving us the ability to create forms easily and then export them as a PDF to open in Acrobat, I feel like a feature to inset placeholder text to fields shouldn't be too difficult to implement.

To clarify, I was hoping to find an option under the Buttons and Forms toolbox that allows us to check off a box for placeholder text so when someone types in the field the original text there is overwritten with the new content. Like a "W" for width and an "L" for length in field boxes meant to hold dimensions for rooms. 

I could see it being part of the Buttons and Forms toolbox where you select an option that says "Placeholder Text" and offers you a field to write in what that text is going to be. Then you can simply duplicate that Text Field for as many times as needed. 

Right now the option I'm using is just creating all the field normally and after exporting them into PDF, I then have to go through each field individually and manually add the placeholder text, then save it. This takes a lot of time out of my day to do because there are a lot of these fields I have to do this too.

[Moved from Community Help (which is about the forums) to a better forum... Mod]
[To find a forum for your program please start at https://community.adobe.com/]

[Atreus79]

That's weird, as I posted it in Community Feedback, not Community Help.

btw this is tzaharia79. I have my own adobe account now that I do not need to share and I could not figure out how to change the username in the old profile so I couldn't update this new one to that username which I would have preferred. But oh well. 🙂

[Steve Werner · Accepted solution]

There is no such feature in InDesign.

Here's the website to make feature requests so they can be seen by the InDesign product managers. Viewers can also vote for your request if they also like it:

https://indesign.uservoice.com/forums/601021-adobe-indesign-feature-requests

[Atreus79]

Funny that the feedback forum here isn't for that kind of feedback. Thanks for the link Steve, I'll take this request over there. 

[Steve Werner]

If you look at the InDesign application Help menu, Submit Bug/Feature Request points to that website.

This forum has much too much diverse commentary for product managers and engineers to try to capture requests here.

[Alan29055504erff]

After almost 4 years I am wondering if this has been added in some way as a feature - I don't see any way to do it but hoping theres something I am missing which has since been added?

[Rishabh_Tiwari]

Hi @Alan29055504erff,

Sorry for the delay. I understand that this has been pending for a long time and I don't have time frame by which this request would be completed so let me assure you I'll share your feedback with the team.

Thanks

Rishabh

[Joel Cherney]

If you are interested, it's not hard to use Acrobat to work around this issue. I was working on a forms project that required frequent editing of the source InDesign file, and I, like @Atreus79 back in 2020, tired rapidly of copying and pasting default forms text every time the client wanted me to tweak the rag on a single explanatory paragraph, or  change logos, or something similarly petty.

I discovered that in Acrobat I could import and export forms data as XML. So, once my default forms placeholder text is perfect, I make sure to go to Prepare Form and Export Form Data as XML. (I don't use the other available formats like .fdf, as I already know that the XML output from Acrobat plays nicely with my automated translation workflow.) Then, if I have to work on the source InDesign document, the next exported PDF export has empty fields, which I can fill by going to Import Form Data (once again in Prepare Form) and bringing in the previous version's default forms text.