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Textbox Text Replacement Upon Type

Community Beginner ,
Aug 05, 2020 Aug 05, 2020

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I'm designing a form for interactive PDF use later, and I have textboxes that are meant to be filled by a client. 

I don't want text outside of the fields denoting what it is meant for. Instead I'd rather have some Text inside the field that is overwritten when they begin typing.

 

Example:
I have two text boxes to fill in WIDTH and LENGTH. I would like a W in the Width field, and an L in the Length field, but as soon as someone types in the field it either disapears or is overwritten automatically when they begin typing.

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Community Expert , Aug 05, 2020 Aug 05, 2020

Create the form fields in InDesign without text in the fields. Create the PDF and open in Acrobat. Add the text in the form fields in Acrobat before distributing the forum.

 

(Text in an InDesign form field is discarded when you export a PDF file.)

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Community Expert ,
Aug 05, 2020 Aug 05, 2020

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Create the form fields in InDesign without text in the fields. Create the PDF and open in Acrobat. Add the text in the form fields in Acrobat before distributing the forum.

 

(Text in an InDesign form field is discarded when you export a PDF file.)

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Community Beginner ,
Aug 05, 2020 Aug 05, 2020

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That's good to know. I'll test this out and see if it works the way I need it to. Thank you!

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Community Beginner ,
Aug 06, 2020 Aug 06, 2020

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It seems like generally this is one process that works. I create the survey, export as interactive PDF making sure all the fields are viewable, then open in Acrobat and begin specifying the placeholder text in each field that needs it, then save it and when a client is ready to fill it in they just type over the placeholder text and replaces it with the correct text. 

 

While this so far seems like it will work, it's not very straight forward. In Acrobat I have to go through each one of the fields to add this placeholder text. That is a lot of extra work. Being able to somehow set this as an InDesign feature which one can duplicate easily without having to manually add it individually, would be preferred for more control and an all-in-one place to develop and modify projects. 

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Community Expert ,
Aug 06, 2020 Aug 06, 2020

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Sorry, finishing work with forms often needs to be done in Acrobat. InDesign is not a full-featured form editor but Acrobat is.

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