save and submit issues with nested/expanding form

[Former Community Member]

I've built two forms in designer (Form_B and Form_C, we'll say) which use scripted repeating subforms to accomodate a range of inputs without presenting the user with piles of fields. I need both of them to correctly maintain their state when saved and re-opened, and transmit the data I need through acrobat.com distribution.

Form B currently doesn't save and re-open correctly:

     There are two levels of repetition, Areas and Categories. There can be one or more Areas, and each Area has one or more Categories. If I open the form (in Acrobat Pro) and fill it out with 2 areas, each area having 2 categories, when i save and re-open the file the second Area is gone, and the first Area has 4 categories.

Form C has many fields (up to 1500+) but I only need a fraction of them to be submited

     On the assumption that the settings in the "binding" pallet would controll this for me, I made a script to unbind all the unnnessisary fields pre-submit, and reverse the changes post-submit. When I test this, the fields still save and submit despite being set fieldName.bind.match = "none". I would also like to temporarily re-name the submitted fields so they come through with unique names. I have a script to do this, and I tested it by running the script (confirming that they changed by looking at the mouse-over tooltip) and saving the form in that state. The form will open back up with the old(unchanged) names and those fields have lost other layout settings.

On both forms, all fields and subforms are normally set to binding = "normal", or fieldName.bind.match = "once"

I currently have no external data bindings (the data view pallet is blank.)

Any thoughts on why fields whos binding = "none" would still submit/save?

Or why repeating subforms with binding = "normal" would get lost in a save?

Is originalFieldName.name = "newName" somehow not sufficient to change how that fieldname gets saved in the data? (despite the apparent name change)

I've searched all the resources I know for any useful idea on this one, and came up blank. Any help or suggestions would be much appreciated.

<<<<<   don't rule out "It shouldn't do that, it must be buggy."  I'm starting to lean that way pretty heavily on a couple counts.  >>>>>>

If anyone would like to see the files in question,  please send me an email at  manager<at>rocklight<dot>net and I'll get a copy of each off to you first thing in the morning.

[Jono_Moore]

Can't help you with the submission issues, but the following blog post may help you with getting your forms restored to the properly:

http://forms.stefcameron.com/2008/09/29/restoring-the-state-of-your-form/

[Former Community Member]

I've found a partial answer for the Form_B issue. (areas and categories not saving correctly):

It looks like another case of this - http://forums.adobe.com/message/1358727#340913

but for subforms.

In order to keep my naming consistent, I had every repeating subform at every level called "fields" and within that a subform called "content" etc. (See attached image) It looks like when the file is re-opened, acrobat/reader is finding the First node named "fields" to apply the saved information to, rather than the correct one. When i renamed the subforms to "AreaFields" and "CatFields" it seems to have solved the problem. (It's still giveing me extra categories, but i think more re-naming is going to solve that too.

Still looking for a solution to the submission problem: how to only submit some of the fields in a form.

(yeah, the nesting is rediculous, I know, but it was necisary for some formatting elements.)

[Jono_Moore]

That makes sense, table rows are subforms.