Live Cycle Form problems - bug or user error?

[Former Community Member]

At work my assistant and I have created an interactive form from an Excel spreadsheet and then proceeded to add drop down boxes in numerous locations on the form. However, when we try to create a pdf in live cycle (8), the drop down boxes pre-populates with the first alpha-numeric character option in the drop down list, instead of a blank space, which is the default state. In addition, the tabbing between the drop down boxes becomes random and I am unable to change them. The form is six pages long, with about twenty to thirty drop down boxes on each page (I think - I don't have the form with me now - on my work computer). Either way - it is a pretty big form. The weird part is that when I split the form in smaller sections (i.e. one page at a time, the problems described above does not happen. I also have numerous other (shorter) forms that work just fine. Is there some sort of size or complexity limitation that is causing this, or is there another way to get around this? The only thing I could do so far to get it to work is to remove the drop down boxes and just make them text entry fields. Any advice would be appreciated.

[Former Community Member]

This will be impossible without seeing the form.....can you post it?

Paul

[Former Community Member]

OK, I will post the form as soon as I can get to it. I am currently traveling overseas on business and unable to access my work files. What complicates the matter a bit more is that my company's IT department restricts access to forums like this, so I can only acces this forum when I am not on the company network. Thanks for the help in advance - I will get back to this as soon as I get back home!

[Former Community Member]

Attached is the PDF with the "bugs", as well as the source file in Excel. All the dropdown boxes are inserted in Livecycle, not Excel.

There are 3 problems according to my assistant/"developer":

1. On the top left corner of the form the border does not convert to the same line thickness. The outside border of the Excel document is 0.03 mm, but on the pdf it appears to be only 0.01 mm. The border is thinner in that top left corner both on the pdf screen display and when printed.

2. Unable to change the tabbing order. Tried setting the tabs and changing the order in the hierarchy and neither works.

3. In the dropdown boxes the default display should be a blank, but for some reason it automatically populates with the first non-blank selection option which is A. This is not a problem with the other forms we have made.

If we separate the pages in this form and turn each page into a separate pdf, none of these problems appear.

Any advice will be appreciated.

Thanks

[Former Community Member]

1. How are you converting from XLSX to PDF. Are you printing the file ato PDF then adding the fields after the fact?

2. I was able to change the tabbing order using the tabbing tool (under the View menu). Moving the fields in the hoierarchy will not affect the tabbing order in this case. By default it is left to right - top to bottom. So if you move the fields on the page then it will affect tabbing order. You really shodul be doing this via the tabbing tool.

3. On teh version that you sent it was showing a blank entry for all DDLists until you selected an item.

Note that I am using version 9 of Acrobat/Reader and version 8.2.1. of Designer.

Paul