Mysterious Tabbing Order Changes

[devrag]

We have noticed some mysterious spontaneous changes in the tab order of the forms we are creating under LiveCycle Designer Version 8.2.1.4029.1.523496.  The original documents are PDF's, which we import into Designer and edit for Accessibility.  We change the tab order, save a new .xdp, and save a .pdf.  That PDF is then extended in Acrobat 9 Pro, and read in Reader.  And the tabbing order is fine.  Then SOMETIMES, when we reopen the .xdp for further editing, groups of tabs have mysteriously changed.  These tab groups of 5-20 tabs have been assigned tabs from the end of the page, which is usually somewhere between 200 and 450 (yes, lots of tabs!).  I am running on Windows XP. 

Has anyone experienced this oddity?

Thanks,

Devra

[Niall_O_Donovan]

Hi,

I have found the tabbing order to be flaky. If you set up a custom tabbing order, then going back into the form and adding new objects or moving things around can easily mess things up.

I have tended to go for an automatic tabbing layout and then strictly layout the form so that the tabbing order is logical.

A couple of points to bear in mind:

1. Tabbing is affected by the relative x/y coordinates of objects, working from top to bottom and left to right. If an object on the right of the form is slightly higher than an object on the left it will get focus first when tabbing. So use the snap to grid and align objects using the align tool.
2. When the tab goes to an object in a subform, the tab will work through all of the objects in that subform, working from the top, etc. until it is finish and then it will go back out to the rest of the form.

I have found this approach to be more robust.

Niall

[devrag]

Thank you for your quick reply.  But I don't think this really addresses my question. 

On my forms, I have fought my way through creating a custom tab order.  Everything is fine.  The PDF I generate from the .XDP is fine.  Then, at some future date, when I open up that .XDP again, the tab order in the XDP has changed.  This is a sporadic problem.

Any ideas?