Form doesn't play nicely with Acrobat 8 Pro

[past-tense]

Hi everyone,

I recently created a very dynamic PDF that we've sent to a number of our partners to help with sharing data.

One of our partners is using Adobe Acrobat 8 to fill in the form. They have reported a bug where filling in a specific number of repeatable subforms causes the order of the subforms to become jumpled, along with having a large number of blank pages tacked onto the end. Removing the 'threashold' repeatabed subform section puts the form back to rights, but any additional subforms added causes the form to break as I've described above.

When I check the compatibility tab of the form properties, I see that all three sections are listed as version 7... I think that applies to the version of LiveCycle.

When I go to save the form as a dynamic PDF, there is a small text included in the save-as screen (near the bottom) saying, "this form is compatible with Acrobat and Adobe Reader 9.0 or later". Is there any way to change the compatibility to 8.0?

To make matters worse, I don't have access to acrobat 8 Pro, so I can't even see the issue for myself. I just have a number of phone conversations to go off of.

I would really appreciate any help that any one might be able to offer. Thanks!

- Scott

[past-tense]

Alright, I have a bit of an update.

First, I want to add that with Acrobat 9 or later, my form functions exactly as I had intended. It's just the one partner organization with Acobat 8.0 that is seeing this issue.

Anyhow, I went through my form paying very close attention to the 'keep with next/prev' settings. I fiddled with those, and sent a revised version off to our partner for testing. They have reported that the issue surrounding the order of the subforms has been resolved. There still is, however, the issue with the additional blank pages being added to the end of the form.

I asked them a few more questions about this, and it seems that every time that they add an instance of a repeatable subform a number of blank pages are added to the end of the subform. Again, I don't have this happening when I view it in Acrobat 9 or Acrobat X, but our partner organization using Acrobat 8 does.

Has anyone come across a similar issue before?

- Scott

[Niall_O_Donovan]

Hi Scott,

I suspect that the page is also set to repeat (in the Object > Binding palette). Just a hunch...

Niall

[kingphysh]

Hi,

Keep in mind, you only need Reader to use the forms (unless you're doing somthing beyond filling-in form fields). Encouraging Reader (vs Pro) lets the user have the full benefit of all form handling updates--and other compatibility issues like IE9. I've have seen what I believe may be a bug that went away when the client upgraded from Reader 9 to Reader 10. It had to do with repeating table cells all named "Cell" .

For one user, their Reader 9 choked, reporting that it couldn't find Row[i]Cell (this is when the script was looking at Row[i].Cell[0] in a for loop). Didn't like it, but upgrading to Reader 10 made it go away--whew!

I don't rule out that if we tried re-instatling Reader 9, that might have fixed it, as well. However, I've had a problem reported from a different user with Reader 9, that went away with Reader 10, as well. I didn't have the opportunity to view the error reported, so I can't say for sure it was the same thing. That user upgraded and the problem went away.

I now insist that my clients have Reader 10. For me, its just asking for trouble, not to. Here you see there have been improvements for form handling in Reader 8, 9 & 10.

http://kb2.adobe.com/cps/837/cpsid_83708/attachments/Acrobat_Reader_ReleaseNote_9.4.5_8.3.pdf

http://kb2.adobe.com/cps/837/cpsid_83708/attachments/Acrobat_Reader_ReleaseNote_10.1.pdf

All Release Notes with links here:

http://kb2.adobe.com/cps/837/cpsid_83708.html

Good luck!

Stephen