Tab Order and speed

[Former Community Member]

I have 4 pages in my document. Page 3 has a couple tables and according to the tab order view in Designer the oreder is correct. However, no matter which field I select in Adobe Reader or Acrobat Pro on this particular page the tab button returns user to the first item on the first page.



The rest of the document tabs fine but is now slow. This is the case regardless of selecting tag or no tag in the save dialog..



with regard to the speed I saw a post suggesting moving static object to a "container" in the hierarchy pane. I see no such item.

[Former Community Member]

No clue on the tab order error. I wouldn't know how to get a form to do that if I *wanted* to without using JavaScript.



For speed, I've notice that many form fields inside table cells in a dynamic form dramatically slows down the tab speed. Further discussion at http://www.adobeforums.com/cgi-bin/webx?128@@.3bc24299

[Former Community Member]

Hi,



You will found it in the menu "windows -> hierarchy", or Maj + F11.

That opens the Hierarchy structure of your pdf.

There you will find the items pageType, pageArea and ContentArea( a symbol of a page with a rose coloured target.

So what i did on my document was: Menu "edit" ->"select all static objects", you group them and then you transfer them to the contentArea in the hierarchy panel.

I test this for the moment with one page only but on this page i have an very heavy field entry where i have to go through by tabulation and i saw that the tab speed got faster from 2 seconds for each tab to 1 second. Better something then nothing...



regards

[Former Community Member]

As an update.



First the speed. The form is not dynamic so that was not a factor but I upgraded the machine from a 1.6Ghz P4 with a 16mb video card to 3Ghz and 64mb video. Much better but i still suspect there is a developer issue for them to sort out.



Now the tabs. I too have no idea why the tab order would do such a thing so what I did was rebuild the table in question (tedious) and all works well, at least before I paste it back in to the original document. Another strange thing though. With this new table, looking at the tab order, some of the tab numbers are blue squares and the rest are yellow. 5-83 and 141 /142 are blue. STRANGE.?



Michel, where are you located and what keyboard are you using? I have no idea what "Maj" key is. I know the equivalent is shift but am curious.

[Former Community Member]

There simply has to be a better way to make adjustments to tab order.



the new tables I made were grouped, copied and pasted into new page in existing document and they sort of work. The tables are side by side, have 10 columns each and 40+ rows. Some of the cells are merged for titles.



Since pasting in to existing document the tab order runs from top of table on the right to the bottom and then up to top of table on left to the bottom of it. No major biggie but frustrating nonetheless.



But to continue my rant: The tab order numbers run from top left to bottom right across BOTH tables. Not what I want AND not what it does.



It would be really nice if I could tell the program where to start the tab order and then by some keyboard combination tell it where I want it to end. i really am not going to individually click 941 cells to reset a tab order that is not following what it thinks is the tab order anyway.,



Is this already possible and I just havent found it?

[Former Community Member]

Ok I believe I discovered why the tabs would start on the right side table. It was a duplicate of the one on the left (made first) with the static text items changed. I guess it confused the program somehow or perhaps method of duplication was wrong, - drag w/control key.



Either way, its works in the correct order now but the tab order numbers are still lying.

[Former Community Member]

Hello RipIt,



I am sorry For the "Maj" key it is the Shift key you are right.

It's now a long time i live in France.



regards Mike