Tab Order

[Former Community Member]

Would anyone happen to know why tab order skips order when hitting radio buttons? Oddest thing is occuring, all my tab order is correct until I reach radio buttons and then for some reason, it skips. I look at the tab order view in Designer and the numbers go precisely in order.



Anyone ever ran into this?

[Former Community Member]

Yes, I have the same problem, and tried scripting a solution to force one field to focus on a radio button group on exit, but that had mixed results.



I have simply gone for checkboxes instead, as a paper form does not restrict people from ticking Yes and No, for example.

[Former Community Member]

Tabbing behaviour is such that you can't set the tabbing order of an individual radio button. You may only do it for radio button groups. Once the radio button group has focus, the user should be able to use the arrow keys to navigate the radio buttons within the group. This is standard Windows behaviour when tabbing through controls on a dialog which contains a radio button group (the selected radio button will receive focus: tabbing from there puts you on the next control outside the radio button group while the arrow keys let you change the selection within the radio button group).



Stefan C.

Adobe Systems

[Former Community Member]

Stefan, I think ryanbutler is saying that the tab order is not even going into the radio button group, but skipping right past it. I have tried aligning the hierarchy to match the tab order, and had a little more success.



Otherwise, just use checkboxes, there much easier to use for creating the forms, and for the end users. Most end users don't know how to use the Tab/Arrow/Spacebar keys to select the radio buttons anyway. At least with check boxes, users just need the Tab/Spacebar keys.

[Former Community Member]

Have you specified a tab order for the form? If not it will follow the top most, left most and work top to bottom in that fashion. If your radio button grouping is lower than the next object it would be skipped over.



If you have specified a tab order, ensure you haven't skipped over the radio button list. Acrobat should resolve the existing order first, then default to the above for remaining forms.



Which version of Acrobat are you using and do you have a sample you can attach?

[Former Community Member]

It is unfortunate to have to skip using the specific tool that was made for the function you wish to use. I have an electronic document that will probably be filled out electronically more often than it will be printed and filled out by hand.



I'd really prefer to use a radio button, as having checkboxes in a place where radio buttons should obviously be used looks unprofessional, but radio button groups (whether set in the tab order or not) come after all text boxes.



How does "aligning the hierarchy" work Mike Bavistock?



I guess I'll check into that.

[Former Community Member]

I'm having an issue with the tab order as well. My radio buttons and check boxes are all set with the right order, starting at 1. Each page of the form appears to have its own order. Pages 3 and 4 tab fine, the way they are supposed to, but Page 1 goes from the radio buttons to the second page, bounces all over, comes back to the first page, then bounces back to the radio buttons ont he second page.