Problem with using dropdown in LifeCycle Designer 8.0

[donn44157260]

Good Day;

I am having a wee bit of trouble with a dropdown list. It was designed using Adobe LifeCycle Designer 8.0

In a form I have a total of 73 items that can be selected from the dropdown list. Currently I have 3 dropdown boxes on the form. In the future I will add a total of 73 dropdown boxes.

When I try to select an item that is more that 4^th down the list, I get the error message” Adobe Reader 9.1 has encountered an error and needs to close”. When I click on “information about the error” I get the following message, “Error Signature – AppName .  AppVer: 9.1.0.163,  ModName: AcroForm.api, ModVer. 9.1.2.82, Offset 0000948a

Thanks All

Chomp

[kingphysh · Accepted solution]

Hi Chomp,

When in Design View:

If you highlight the dropdown box in the Hiarchy pallet, does it stay highlighted? or does the highlighting flip to someother object?

If you click on it directly in the workspace. does it show "Drop-down list" in the Object pallet for the "Type"?  or something unexpected?

If it won't stay highlighted or says something unexpected, this is your issue--I suspect in copying and pasting the dropdown box  something went wrong.

If so, you need to get rid of those bad objects. My experience is that if you have bad objects you may have trouble deleting them directly and may have to delete the parent (the tablerow or subform that they are in).

I am very curious if this is your problem. Please post an update when you get a chance.

Good luck,

Stephen

P.S.

Go slowly when you copy and paste--make sure Designer is finished with that operation before starting the next paste--it takes longer than you may realize. Also, make sure the Object pallet indicates that you are where you think you are, before you paste. After you're done pasting an object, Designer has an odd routine of indicating the Master Page as the object Type when its done. If so, set the focus again to where you want to paste, before pasting another drop-down still on your clipboard. If your drop down boxes are in table rows, consider copying and inserting entire rows containg your DDL

Finally, 73 DDLs with 73 items? Wow! IMHO 73 items is too many for a user. Consider using the preOpen event and script the populating of the DDL. If you do that then you can populate them with a shorter list after the user has made some choices. Just a thought.

[donn44157260]

Good Day Stephen;

Thank you for the information, it was a great help. The other part I was missing was (what I will call) part 2 of the drop down box, <items presence="hidden" save="1">. There must be an entry in this list for each item in the drop down box.

As you can see I am very new at this and some times what is obvious to others it takes me a bit to figure out.

As for your statement “IMHO 73 items is too many for a user”, you are very correct. Once I figured out how to get the dropdowns to work properly, that was the next part I was going to tackle.

After giving this issue some thought, there are two things I will need to research.

Using the “preOpen” and adding a button to add more rows as the user needs them. The only issue I see with the button is that this can add to the number of clicks the user needs to do.

Thanks again Stephen

Chomp