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Acrobat 8 Pro - Slow when tabbing between form fields in 14 page LiveCycle 7.1 form

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Level 2
I have a 14 page LiveCycle 7.1 document that works perfectly in Acrobat 7.0.8, however after downloading the Acrobat 8 Pro trial and opening the same document in Acrobat 8 Pro the document is a bit slow. When I attempt to fill out the form it now takes 2 seconds to tab between each form field. After hitting the tab key Acrobat spikes the CPU to 100% for 2 seconds. Bummer, hope Reader 8.0 won't have this problem when it's released, but I'm sure it will. Someone broke something. I did notice that if I don't use the tab key but instead simply click on each field in the form it works perfectly fine without this issue. Something is terribly wrong/inefficient with the code that's used to determine which field to tab to next.



One other thing that I noticed that appears to be broken is the print button on the main data entry page on this document calls the following code:



// Print.

xfa.host.print(1, "1", (xfa.host.numPages - 1).toString(), 0, 1, 0, 0, 0);



In Acrobat Reader 7 this code causes only page 2 to the end of the document to be printed. However in Acrobat 8 Pro this doesn't work as expected. Instead of only printing page 2 to the end of the document it prints the entire document.



Neither of these issues are good. Any suggestions?
12 Replies

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Former Community Member
I have the same time delay problem, which I posted under the Bugs sub-topic. In LifeCycle Designer 8 (which came with Acrobat 8 Pro), the screen has a fade out/fade in effect that takes forever to page through forms or to cut & paste. And I can see no way to turn off the effect.



As for the print problem, I haven't encountered that yet. When I created a print button on my form and typed in the script to print pages 19 to 23 (on a 0-based system), it does that exactly.

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Level 2
Polar Bear,



Can you try the following script in your print button and let me know if it works for you in Adobe 8 Pro? It should print from the 2nd page to the end of the document...



// Print.

xfa.host.print(1, "1", (xfa.host.numPages - 1).toString(), 0, 1, 0, 0, 0);



Your first issue with LiveCycle Designer taking longer to page through forms is slightly different from my original issue. Mine was tabbing through a LiveCycle form that was opened in Acrobat 8 Pro...Acrobat 8 Pro was slow in my instance...

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Former Community Member
I'm having the same problem as you, wpinegar. I have a 31 page dynamic Acrobat 7 form. I'm viewing it with Acrobat Pro 8, not sure which version the client is using. Except, you said the delay does not happen when you click to a new field but only when you tab. For me, at least, the delay depends on whether or not I made a change to the field that I'm leaving. If I did make a change, then it is slow. It is as if Acrobat is having a hard time finding the right place to save the new field value.

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Former Community Member
I spent some time diagnosing the problem. My conclusion is that the tabbing delay occurs when the form fields are nested in a table. I removed the entry fields from the table and now have no detectable delay.



I wish Adobe had not included tables at all!!! I come from a web background where tables are extremely useful and efficient. But I have run into countless bugs and inconveniences because I decided to use them in my PDF form. Now it looks like I will have to reformat my 7 page entry form.

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Level 2
My issue isn't quite that simple. I have no nested tables (or any tables for that matter) on any of my forms. However my Adobe form document is 14 pages. Adobe Reader 8.0 and Acrobat 8.0 Pro both have slowness issues tabbing between form fields. If I remove 6 of the 14 pages it speeds up quite a bit and I don't notice the tabbing issue any more.



I just appears that the new code in 8.0 isn't as efficient in tabbing between form fields as 7.0 was...

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Former Community Member
Sorry for the delay in getting back to you.



When I use the print code above, it defaults to printing the entire document but that is because the print dialog box comes up. Apparently the second and third parameters (the print range) are ignored if a print dialog box is used. When I changed the first parameter to zero (i.e., no print dialog box) the correct range is printed.

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Level 2
OK, thanks for the feedback! I'm glad you were able to figure out what the issue was. This is definitely a change from the way Acrobat 7 worked. In Acrobat 7 I could display the print dialog box and specify the pages that I wanted to print. The print dialog box would display and allow the user to choose a printer. Which pages to print (page 2 to the end of the document) would be automatically specified by the xfa.host.print command.



Worked fine in 7. It's broken in 8. So far I'm not impressed. Acrobat 8 is much slower tabbing between fields and cannot print correctly when displaying the print dialog box. Very strange...I though Adobe was better than this.

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Former Community Member
I just discovered that removing tables does not completely solve the slow tabbing problem. While it significantly sped it up, there is still detectable lag when tabbing through my full 7-page form when it is saved in Dynamic format (I had no lag with Static format). Unfortunately, my form must be Dynamic.



I tried changing all my entry field bindings to "none" (default is "normal"), but that made little or no difference. Any other suggestions?

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Level 2
I think the best thing to do right now is bug report the issues and wait for an update or stick with Adobe Reader 7.

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Former Community Member
HI

I use WIN XP with Acrobat Reader 8

When i try print any file from file->print option or print button

the print dialog box have about 2-3 minutes to open and in this time reader not respond

Thank

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Former Community Member
I recently loaded Acrobat 9 Pro and have the same issue with tabbing in forms being slow.

We did not build this form, we download it from a major vendor.

Is there anything we can do on our end to speed this up?



Thanks

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Level 2
This was a short-lived issue with the Acrobat 8 reader. I can confirm for you that 9.1 does not exhibit this issue. You may need to consult with the form provider and see if they offer an updated form.