Text fields with comb of ... characters change at client

[Former Community Member]

Hi, I have an urgent problem.

I have created a form with text fields set as a comb of [] characters. Now the number of characters seems to have changed when some of our clients open the form in Adobe Reader. All our clients have access to the form on the same server, and as we receive many forms with the correct number of characters, I suppose this could be a problem with the individual user's version of Adobe Reader. I seems to be a problem for users at different physical locations, so it is not a problem isolated to just one computer.

The form is developed in Adobe LiveCycle Designer ES 8.2 and is set to run in Adobe Reader 8.1 or later.

If this is a problem due to the clients version of Adobe Reader, is there anything I can do to prevent, this from happen.

I really hope some one can help me with this one.

Regards

Kirstine

[Former Community Member]

I have not heard of this issue before .....just to make sure I understand.

You create a field with a comb and you have limited the input to x chars. Some users open the form and get more than x chars visible?

When this happens can you get the version of Acrobat/Reader that they are using and the language of the OS?

Paul

[Niall_O_Donovan]

Hi Kirstine,

The documentation indicates that setting the target version to v8.1 should be adequate, as comb fields are supported from v8. However a user with an earlier version of Reader will still be able to open the form. They will just get a message to update Reader as some of the features in the form may not be supported with their earlier version.

I think that you would need to try and find out what version of Reader the users that are experiencing the problem are using.

You could set up a script to check the version of Acrobat/Reader. Then if it is v8.1 or above show the comb field, otherwise hide the comb field and show a standard field instead.

Good luck,

Niall

[Former Community Member]

Hi Niall

Problem is solved. Apparently some users did not have Adobe Reader installed on their computers at all. ( I hadn't foreseen that could be an issue) The form therefore opened in Internet Explorer instead.

I suppose I can't script my way out of that one.

Thanks for your quick answers.

Kirstine

[Niall_O_Donovan]

Hi,

You can test the file name and if the first four characters are "http" or "file", then you know that it is opened in a web browser: See this post:

Form data don't clear after closing

Also I am fairly sure you can test the host application, but I can't remeber the syntax. If I find it I will post back here.

Niall

ps: added "file" to the test to see if the form is opened in a browser.