Subform duplicates when saved as reader enabled

[a_c_hoff]

Hi all,

I have run into a strange issue in my form. I have a subform that is repeatable and it works perfectly when I test the form in Livecycle or Adobe Reader. However, when I use Adobe Acrobat to save the form as Reader Extended PDF>Enable Additional Features it screws up the form so that when it is opened in Reader there are two instances of my subform instead of just one. To make it worse, every time the form is saved and re-opened it adds a new instance of the repeatable subform.

Does anyone have any idea why this might be happening and what I can do to fix it?

[Magus069]

When you encounter this kind of issue, you must find which object is causing this problem.

When you save the file with Adobe Acrobat it saves it as it is, but when you open it, Adobe Reader is mixing two objects together which cause one of them to have some properties of the other object.

I suggest you make a copy of your form by saving it as another name, then start to delete objects EXCEPT the one having this issue until the issue is gone.

When the issue is not occuring anymore, that means the last object you have delete is the problem, you might have to change its name or recreate the object..

It might happens often if you have two different object in two whole different paths that has the same name, just by changing its name might fix the problem

It might happen if you have two other objects than the one having the issue with the same name as well which means

e.g.

Object name having the issue: frmRepeat

And accross the hierarchy you have two other forms named frmBlank

You might have to change one of the frmBlank's name to fix the problem...

I know it might be a long way to debug this issue, but it is how you can fix it

[a_c_hoff]

I will try this and let you know if it works.

I went through the form and found that one of my tables was causing the issue. I changed the data-binding for the table from Use Name to No Data Binding and the subform no longer repeats itself when saved as a reader enabled form. I am incredibly glad that this worked (this form literally has more than 10,000 lines of Javascript) but I don't understand what the issue was. I have several other tables within the subform that are exact duplicates and all of them had the same style of data-binding (I literally copy-pasted them and changed the names) and I did not change anything. The form works even though they remain unchanged.

But it worked, so I am happy.

Thanks for the help.

Message was edited by: a.c.hoff

[SI_MSD7]

I've spent HOURS+++ trying to find a solution a similar problem only to discover that the "field names" within a repeating subform must be unique (not just the subform itself). Case in point, when I had a subform containing 3 fields: TextField1[0], TextField1[1], TextField1[2], I ran into an issue where a new instance of the subform was created each time the form was opened and saved. VERY AGGRAVATING! However, by changing the names of each field within the subform, the issue was resolved!

NOTE: Considering, I needed to use that same subform in my form again, I made sure to give the subform #2 a unique name, as well as the fields within the subform. Doing so allowed me to keep the data binding of the subform set at 'Use name (...)'

I hope this info helps someone else in the near future.