Get text to span multiple pages

[Former Community Member]

I have seen this question elsewhere but I have not been able to perform this action. I have one master page and a body page. On the master page, I have an image and several lines of text making up a header. I then have a text box with a simple line of text. In a subform, I have several text fields. all these take up about half the page. The rest of the page needs to be an area for typing text in narrative format and it needs to span across several pages. I have tried the "allow to span across pages" option but it is never available (it is always greyed out).

I tried creating a large text field but it does not span to the next page, it just creates a scroll bar on the right side.

Sorry for the newbie type question so I appologize in advance if this is irritating.

Thanks.

[Former Community Member]

bbqjohn,



You want to make sure the box checked to allow multiple lines and the form is saved as dynamic type.

Also, make sure the text field is wrapped in a flow content subform.

[Former Community Member]

Ok, I did that but on the first page it just creates a scroll bar and keeps adding text to the first page and does actually move on to the next page. Did I miss something?



when I print it, i still just get one page with only part of the text on the first page and second page is blank.

[Former Community Member]

>>>when I print it, i still just get one page with only part of the text on the first page and second page is blank.



Which version of Acrobat that you are using?

[Former Community Member]

version 7 Professional.



Does the subform and text field have to be a full page long? I got it to do it once with just a blank page with nothing but the subform and text field. But when i shrunk the text field down to the size I need it be, it wont work.



I have resorted to limiting the field to a number of characters until I figure this out. It isn't perfect but it works.

[Former Community Member]

I remember I ran into similar problem as you described. Looking at the form on the monitor, the content that displayed on all pages but it only prints the content of the first page. At that time, I tested this with Acrobat Professional 7.0



I believe I upgraded to Acrobat Prof 7.0.3 and this problem goes away.



Here is one of the old posts that someone asked about the same issue.



http://www.adobeforums.com/cgi-bin/webx?128@@.3bbca983

[Former Community Member]

i am still working this problem. I have not been able duplicate previous examples of yours. So I used one of them and tried to change the content area size since i only need the field to cover half of the first page to begin with and then all of the subsequent pages. when i do that, the subsequent pages only have a small box on them and it does not cover the whole page.

[Former Community Member]

I don't know if this will be of any help or not but let me explain what I did to a form to get the text in some of the fields to continue on to the next page.



On my first page I have a sub form I call MainPage and within that sub form I have several sub forms that each contain a title bar and some descriptive text and an expandable text field. The specs for the MainPage sub form is as follows,



Object tab > Subform tab > Type: = Flow Content.

Object tab > Subform tab > Allow Page Breaks within Content is checked.

Object tab > Subform tab > After: = Continue Filling Parent.



Object tab > Binding tab > Repeat Subform for Each Data Item is checked and Min Count is set to 1.



Layout tab > Auto-fit for the Height is checked.



The specs for one of the subforms inside the MainPage sub form are,



Object tab > Subform tab > Type: = Position Content.

Object tab > Subform tab > Allow Page Breaks within Content is checked.

Object tab > Subform tab > After: = Continue Filling Parent.



Object tab > Binding tab > Repeat Subform for Each Data Item is checked and Min Count is set to 1.



Layout tab > Auto-fit for the Height is checked.



The specs for the expandable text field are,



Object tab > Field tab > Allow Multiple Lines and Allow Plain Text Only check boxes are both checked.

Layout tab > Expand to fit check box for the Height is checked only.



This set up works for me and I get a text field that continues onto the next page but I have noticed some strange things going on that make it work rather awkward. The scroll bars are odd and some times after adding a bunch of text and then I move out of the field a text overflow symbol shows up at the bottom of the continued field on the next page. When you come back and click on the field to add more text the scroll bar appears and you need to scroll to the end of the value that is allready in the field to continue typeing.

[Former Community Member]

tried that. works for one page but does not expand across several pages. useful if it werent for the awkward stuff that happens.

[Former Community Member]

Ok i got it to work like i need.

One subform as position content, allow page breaks, layout= height Auto fit. text field= allow multiple lines, layout= height expand to fit. text now expands across however many pages i need. thanks all for help