Tab Order is set correctly, but does does not work when previewing

[Former Community Member]

I am currently designing a form in Adobe Life cycle 8.0. I set the tab order and everything looks good, but when I go to preview it in Acrobat 8.0 or Life cycle 8.0 it misses those tabs. Is there a fix?

Thanks alot,

Inge

[Former Community Member]

William--I tried that method. (See reference to "Felicity method" in my post.)



However, I did just find a fix for my own case. I renamed the "both" checkbox and the "format" field, and it worked. So I tried changing "both" by itself and "format" by itself. Changing "format" by itself (to "print_format") was sufficient to fix the problem.



Recapping, "format" was the field Acrobat was supposed to tab to after "both," but didn't. So the fix could be either "don't use 'format' as a field label, -or- "go to the last functioning tab and change the name of the next tab target."



So I ran a quick check, saving the fixed file, then renaming "print_format" to "format." It broke the tab order again.



Then I tried changing another field's label to "format" and the order broke again, -at that point-. So I think it's possible that the field labels are the source of at least some of the problems.



Here's hoping it works for at least one other person. If it does work, post back to the thread what the tab target was labeled--maybe we can collect some more crunchy data, make a list of forbidden words.



Thanks,

Kathy Ryan

[Former Community Member]

I am also having these problems and none of the suggested fixes here have changed anything for me.



I originally was just having problems with dynamic instances of subforms at runtime. The subform would not fall into the tab order, instead tab order would come back to it after going through all fields on page. Even when coming back to dynamic instance, it would go through fields in a completely different order than originally specified.



Now, my whole form is acting up and I have no idea how it is coming up with its order. From the very first field, it jumps down halfway the page into the middle of another subform. I see no pattern or rhyme or even reason for its order... :)



Please let me know if anyone else figures anything out here or hears from adobe? I am stuck and this is starting to cause major issues with our clients.



Thanks!

Ben

[Former Community Member]

Did you save the form and then in Acrobat (not designer) go to advance tab and Enable usage rights in Acrobat Reader. I wrote the process out on the forum on how to do this. Basically you are saving the file to a different name but with this advanced attribute and then take it back into the form and set your tabs.



How to set tabs in Acrobat using forms designer tool







Create a pdf from a Word document using the standard create pdf.





In Acrobat 8 select forms, create new form using the current document.





I let Acrobat automatically scan the document and create the form elements. I then go in and tweak and modify. I make sure each element has it's own unique name. (Use Hierarchy to move elements around and to group check boxes etc.)





I do not put items is any specific order.





Here is the important part. Save the document and then in Acrobat, not LiveCycle Designer, Click on "Advanced" and select "Enable Usage Rights in Acrobat Reader". Save the document using the same name and let it write over the existing file. Now go to Forms, Edit Form in Designer, and it will give you a warning dialogue box asking you to Save a Copy. Save a Copy and now make the name different from the original.

NOW you will close the current document and open this new Saved Copy.





Click on Forms, Edit Form in Designer and it will open in Designer without giving you any warning. Set your Tabs like normal going to view, Tab Order etc..





They will now stay in the order you set them in.







Conclusion is that once you save the document with Enable Usage Rights in Acrobat Reader, the document will function properly.







This is a bug that Acrobat knows about but has yet to fix.











William "Bill" Patterson

Web Developer

Specialized Technology Services

Information Technology Services

California State University, East Bay

William.Patterson@csueastbay.edu

Direct Line: (510) 885-2737

[Former Community Member]

Yes, I did all of that and it did not fix. My form was created in Designer and not from a word document.



Another interesting point is that it was created in R7 of Designer and now is saved as a R8 Dynamic form. I bet this has caused problems. R8 seems to keep everything at the page level.



I will go through your steps again, enabling User Rights etc... but I am not feeling optimistic.



Thanks

[Former Community Member]

Make sure that your fields aren't accidentally overlapping. That fouled up tab order for me. Some fields got skipped completely. I had to zoom to 200% to effectively check that, but that may just be my presbyopia kicking in.

[Former Community Member]

I have now changed my tactic to a foolproof one. I no longer set the tab order using the tab order tool. The default in LiveCycle is from top to bottom. If two fields have the same Y axis, then it goes left to right. So I now go through the form, align everything in each row to top so it goes left to right. If I need to change order and say put a group of check boxes on top of each other but tab them top to bottom before going to the right, I group those checkboxes in a subform. It will handle subforms from top to bottom too.



This method takes a little while to do up front, but then it won't get broken.



Oh, one more thing, if working on an existing form that isn't tabbing correctly, you must remove the traversal nodes from the XML in the xdp document first. It is these nodes that I have found to not be processing correctly in Reader. Then if you ever do use the tab order tool again, it will recreate these traversal nodes which will screw up your tab order.



If you start a form from scratch and never use the tabbing tool, it should use the adobe default tab order.



For more info on the default tab order, just search for "tab order" in the LiveCycle help. It defines the hierarchy.

[Former Community Member]

If you go to the XML tab and do a find (control F for WIN users) search for <traversal>. Delete all instances there will be three line of script) then your tabs will be in order, starting at the fisrt field, then left to right. Do not use the tab set option in view!!!

[Former Community Member]

We understand that this has been a major thorn for some time, and we've paid attention to your feedback.



I hope and expect that you will be extremely pleased with the extensive work we've done for LiveCycle ES Update 1 (Designer 8.2) coming soon. We've completely reworked tab order authoring, rewriting it from the ground up. (Rest assured that we do preserve any older forms, exactly as they are, of course) - but we've made it a lot easier to author, and removed all inconsistencies between design-time and runtime tab order.



If you are on the LiveCycle beta / preview program, or part of the Acrobat 9 beta, you can check out the new implementation today.



Thanks

Mike

[Former Community Member]

Thanks for the tip. It's scary to operate on the XML, but it worked.

PHEWWWWW!

[Former Community Member]

I've noticed that when you save the .pdf, if you save it as v6, or v7 you get the tab order issue.



LiveCycle Designer 8 defaults to saving pdf files as version 6 in the save dialog. However, if you choose to save it as a v8 pdf in the dialog box, the tabbing order seems to work as expected in the v8 Reader. However it still doesn't tab properly in previous versions of the reader as reported by our recipients, forcing them to upgrade to version 8 if they want that to function properly.

[Former Community Member]

hi all,

i have designed my form in designer 8.1 and i set teh tab setting because i had to insert fields in between. the order looks fine in designer but when i look up in pdf preview it doesnt appear in that order and just seems to be jumping about. i have tried all the methods like saving it in acrobat reader, deleting the xml tags but nothing works

i need to submit this form at soon and cant figure what else to be done

any help is much appreciated

thanks

[Former Community Member]

Wow, I suffered like the rest of you, both with the Tab Order and with setting Acrobat Reader privileges for fillable forms. The cause, unfortunately, appears to be on the Mac side of life. I use Leopard.



When I went to the dark side (using Parallels and XP) and downloaded the 30-day trial version of Acrobat Professional, I succeeded in setting both the Tab Order and setting Reader privileges.



Don't get excited PC guys. There is still not enough material here to make a funny TV ad.



My goodness, though. The frustrating process of discovery was a tremendous waste of time and energy. How long has CS3 been out? Are there any excuses?



Tim

[Former Community Member]

Going to File->Save As, then selecting Acrobat 8 PDF under version actually works! I don't know why the default is Acrobat 6. I am using version 8.0. Thanks T Kern! I also agree with Tim--wasted hours with no excuse.

Kevin

[Former Community Member]

hi, hopefully this thread is still active... my issue has to do with tabbing, but is a little different.



I made a huge form (8 pages) with a ton of fields (over 10,000), so remaking is NOT going to happen. about 50% of these fields are just titles for the fillable field, so i don't want them tabbed to at All.



that's issue number 1. is there any way to take them out of the tabbing order? I tried a few of the previously mentioned idea's and the renaming to "noninteractive" worked all-right, but changing every instance doesn't copy over correctly.



issue number 2 and so much more of an issue... when I start on page 2, it seems none of the fields want to change the number they have. the second field on the page is tabbed number 221. i cannot move it up or down, the only option is Move First and Move Last. when I move first, I try to move it down one so it is in slow two, but it then moves all the way back to slot 221. for some reason it won't sit anywhere but the first or last spot. any clues there?

[Former Community Member]

Hi; I used William Patterson's advice (post #43 dated 5 March 2008) and it worked for me.

Thanks Bill; if you're ever in Sydney Australia, I owe you one.