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tadobeee
November 19, 2009
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Remove or exclude object from tab order

  • November 19, 2009
  • 4 replies
  • 5848 views

In one portion of a form I'm designing, the user is supposed to enter several numbers in a table, and at the bottom two numbers are automatically calculated for them.

I explain in the instructions for the form that some fields are automatically calculated, but I actually do not have room in the actual form to add a note next to every calculated field reminding people of that.  I've added code so that if a user tries to click on the automatically calculated field, a messagebox comes up explaining that the field is automatically calculated.  However, I do not want such a box to come up if someone is just tabbing through the objects on that page.  That would be annoying.

What I want is to be able to exclude those two numeric entry fields from the tab order alltogether.  Adobe should just skip those fields when a user tabs through.  I can't figure out how to do that though.  Is there a way?  Other suggestions?

Thanks

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Best answer by djaknow

Set the fields you want skipped to Read Only in the Object tab under Value >> Type and go to your XML Source tab. On the XML Source tab, hit ctrl + H to open up a find and replace window, find readOnly and replace it with protected. The fields will then be completely skipped in the tab order. If they're already set to Calculated - Read Only then you only need to do the find and replace.

djaknow

4 replies

D
djaknowAccepted solution
November 19, 2009

Set the fields you want skipped to Read Only in the Object tab under Value >> Type and go to your XML Source tab. On the XML Source tab, hit ctrl + H to open up a find and replace window, find readOnly and replace it with protected. The fields will then be completely skipped in the tab order. If they're already set to Calculated - Read Only then you only need to do the find and replace.

djaknow

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tadobeeeAuthor
December 8, 2009

I implemented this fix, and it worked great in the form.  Unfortunately, today we tried our back-end server program (which had largely been validated already and was good to go) and found that it could no longer parse data from the "protected" fields.  Does protecting those fields make them non-parsable, and is there a way to get around that?

Thanks again for any suggestions!

D
djaknow
December 8, 2009

You could set the fields back to "open" on the pre-save event using the script

this.access = "open";

When the form is saved, the fields would no longer be protected so I'm not sure if this is the best solution for you but I think it would work so you could at least test the form and verify your integration.

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tadobeeeAuthor
December 8, 2009

Actually, it is working ok.  It had been failing on one of the first fields (which was one of the few that we had made protected).  We thought it was because we changed it to protected, but it looks like this file got corrupted somehow.  I reverted to an earlier version, updated with the lost changes, and now everything is working fine.

Sorry for my confusion.

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