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Seth McGraw
Seth McGraw
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CS6 form creation not allowing tables to be used.

Aug 21, 2012 8:21 AM

I have created a form to be exported to pdf, however none of the table contents output as text boxes. Is there a way to have this happen, or a way to convert the table into individual boxes to be assigned? The form has approx 800 boxes which need to be available for input. As an experiment I created a simple 16 x 10 table with plain empty cells and exported to pdf. acrobat ignored the table even after cycling it through the auto-detect wizard.

 

Any ideas?

I posted this on the acrobat forum to no avail.

817 Views   18 Replies   Latest reply: Seth McGraw, Aug 21, 2012 11:55 AM
 
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  • Bob Levine
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    1. Bob Levine,
    Aug 21, 2012 8:44 AM   in reply to Seth McGraw
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    Did you put form fields into the document?

     

     

     

    Bob

     
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  • Seth McGraw
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    2. Seth McGraw,
    Aug 21, 2012 9:05 AM   in reply to Bob Levine
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    which document? the outputted pdf? I tried to use the wizard...it's approx 800 boxes.

     
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  • Seth McGraw
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    3. Seth McGraw,
    Aug 21, 2012 9:10 AM   in reply to Bob Levine
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    shouldn't the cells in any table automatically be a text field by default, if that cell is empty?

     
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  • Bob Levine
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    4. Bob Levine,
    Aug 21, 2012 9:17 AM   in reply to Seth McGraw
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    I’m not sure where you got that idea, but no.

     

     

     

    If you want text fields there, you’ll need to add them using the form tools in either InDesign or Acrobat.

     

     

     

    Bob

     
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  • Seth McGraw
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    5. Seth McGraw,
    Aug 21, 2012 9:44 AM   in reply to Bob Levine
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    how do you assign a table cell to be a text field?

     

    http://acrobatusers.com/tutorials/designing-forms-auto-field-detection -adobe-acrobat

     

    This link supposedly shows that tables are to be auto-detected by acrobat by using the wizard. I do agree with you that it is not true though, because it simply isn't working.

     
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  • Seth McGraw
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    6. Seth McGraw,
    Aug 21, 2012 9:57 AM   in reply to Bob Levine
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    or is there a way to convert table cells into rectangles? I could then multi-select and make them all form fields in one fell swoop.

     
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  • Bob Levine
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    7. Bob Levine,
    Aug 21, 2012 10:23 AM   in reply to Seth McGraw
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    Are you saying you ran the form detection in Acrobat Pro and it didn't work?

     

    Bob

     
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  • Seth McGraw
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    8. Seth McGraw,
    Aug 21, 2012 10:55 AM   in reply to Bob Levine
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    absolutely.

     
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  • Bob Levine
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    9. Bob Levine,
    Aug 21, 2012 10:59 AM   in reply to Seth McGraw
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    I don’t have an explanation for that except to tell you that as good as it is, it’s not perfect.

     

     

     

    Did you make the table cells large enough? Are there strokes on the cells?

     

     

     

    Bob

     
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  • Seth McGraw
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    10. Seth McGraw,
    Aug 21, 2012 11:07 AM   in reply to Bob Levine
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    yes to the strokes, however I'm sure what's big enough. This site has changed. How might I post the doc? Would you mind taking a peek?

     
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  • Seth McGraw
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    11. Seth McGraw,
    Aug 21, 2012 11:08 AM   in reply to Bob Levine
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    So you have seen tables recognized by the wizard? That's promising if so.

     
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  • Bob Levine
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    12. Bob Levine,
    Aug 21, 2012 11:15 AM   in reply to Seth McGraw
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    Start here: http://www.theindesigner.com/blog/episode-52-acrobat-friendly-form-des ign

     

     

     

    But I don’t understand why you don’t want to do this in InDesign using the form tools there.

     

     

     

    Bob

     
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  • sagar-khanna
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    13. sagar-khanna,
    Aug 21, 2012 11:23 AM   in reply to Bob Levine
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    You can convert a table in ID to text fields in acrobat using the wizard to detect form fields. Make sure you type the text labels in the table header.

     

     

    You cannot directly convert a table to a group of text fields directly from ID using Button and form panel.  But you can 'gridify' a rectangle into a grid and then select all the rectangles and convert to a text field.

     
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  • Seth McGraw
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    14. Seth McGraw,
    Aug 21, 2012 11:37 AM   in reply to Bob Levine
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    Bob,

     

    That's what I've been trying to do from the beginning. I created a relatively complex document in indesign that has a crap-ton of text fields (made in cs6 with tables). I outputed the document to pdf without assigning those "data entry grids" as form text fields in indesign because I couldn't figure out how to assign cells within a table (tables are only selectable with the text tool). I then brought it into acrobat and ran the wizard, hoping to have acrobat detect my tables....no go. You know the rest. I was counting on not having to use the old-school method that Sagar-Khanna has suggested (the way I've always had to do it before). That method works, but as you can imagine is time consuming.

     
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  • Seth McGraw
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    15. Seth McGraw,
    Aug 21, 2012 11:38 AM   in reply to sagar-khanna
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    that's the problem Sagar...it's not detecting the fields.

     
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  • Seth McGraw
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    16. Seth McGraw,
    Aug 21, 2012 11:40 AM   in reply to Bob Levine
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    By the way Bob, I'm totally excited about well all of the other form creation stuff is working. It's definitely awesome.....

     
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  • Bob Levine
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    17. Bob Levine,
    Aug 21, 2012 11:41 AM   in reply to Seth McGraw
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    Why not draw a text field with the forms and buttons panel and then use step and repeat to copy it to other cells.

     

     

     

    Bob

     
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  • Seth McGraw
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    18. Seth McGraw,
    Aug 21, 2012 11:55 AM   in reply to Bob Levine
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    That's what I'm doing now. That's what I meant by replicating. I've got to (as Sagar suggested) "gridify" about 40 aligned boxes, make them form text fields, assign the form values, replicate and align roughly 20 groups of 4.

    I'm in the printing business. I'm setting up interactive sig sheets in pagination. It would have been nice to just create the grids using basic tables and have the wizard auto-detect the gazillion fields...voila! No major problem though.

    Old-school it is, I guess.

     
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