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CS6 How do you set form font

Contributor ,
May 09, 2012 May 09, 2012

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We have a diary type form that needs to be in Helvetica

Just tried to set up in CS6 and can't see where to set the font - text boxes default to times

How do you set the font in Indesign's new PDF form creation tool text boxes?

tia

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correct answers 1 Correct answer

Community Expert , Sep 16, 2015 Sep 16, 2015

"I came here to try to find how to set the font in an interactive form field and all I found was this "useless" drivel."

Did you read the posts above?
Did you try out FormMagic by Bookraft Solutions at id-Extras?

http://www.id-extras.com/products/formmagic

The simple answer is:

You cannot do it with InDesign.

You can do it with Acrobat Pro.

And you can automat some things with FormMagic Pro (not an Adobe product).

Uwe

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Guru ,
May 09, 2012 May 09, 2012

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You can't, you have to open it in Acrobat and do it there.

Think that sucks? Join the club.

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Contributor ,
May 09, 2012 May 09, 2012

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Huh!

But that was was of the reasons we upgraded so we didn't have to go to Acrobat to do the form work.

This diary gets changed regularly with over 270 - 300 fields. Doing it in 2 separate apps was a pain.

What on earth is the point of having a form field if you cant define the font - even if it is a basic pdf font.

C'm tell me you were joking - right?

Adobe - ?

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Guru ,
May 09, 2012 May 09, 2012

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I would loooooove to tell you I'm joking...  Have a look at the last patr of this discussion here.  Adobe has trumpeted this as a new feature, without telling people that unless you're the defaults kind of person it's not that useful.  Perhaps they actually have forgotten that designers use InDesign?

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Community Expert ,
May 09, 2012 May 09, 2012

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Does it occur to you that perhaps they just didn’t have time to get all of this in?

You can’t have version two without version one.

Fill out a feature request: https://www.adobe.com/cfusion/mmform/index.cfm?name=wishform

Bob

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Community Expert ,
May 09, 2012 May 09, 2012

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>You can’t have version two without version one.

That's why we all eagerly await Footnotes v.2. After all those years of developing since CS2 it *must* have some killer options by now!

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Contributor ,
May 09, 2012 May 09, 2012

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Aw c'mon

Here's your new car - with new mp3 player doc

Wot  - you need to control the volume? - no - this has a preset volume - once you plug in - that's it

put in a feature request!

This is a very basic requirement.

As any designer - be it on the web - in a pdf - on a printed page

Apart from actually putting the box on the page - this is the next most important thing (visually) - ie how it looks

No excuses - don't tell me I can edit forms when the only content control is size - thats a half baked solution.

Who on earth is going to want to see Times pop its head up in a form on a page of designed with sans serifs fonts.

Adobe seriously - if you are going to impliment a feature from one app to another - at least put in the options that the original app has had for X years.

Seriously disppointed.

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Contributor ,
Jun 07, 2012 Jun 07, 2012

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Kind of a useless comment Bob. This isn't "version 1", far far from it. Form functionality was supposed to be greatly improved this release Bob and was touted as such here, there and everywhere, when in actually it's mediocre improvement at best. Seriously dissapointing Adobe. I guess we're going to have to wait til CS8 or 9 to get some of the features we need.

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Community Expert ,
Jun 07, 2012 Jun 07, 2012

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In the sense that this is the first time that ID can generate a PDF that has fields without the need to run form recognition in Acrobat, it really is version 1, but the larger picture is that the ID team controls ID, but the Acrobat team controls the code used to make the form fields, and they didn't enable all the features you or I might have wanted in the library they delivered to ID. I believe the rationale was related to security, but you can ascribe any motives you like if you're a conspiracy theorist.

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Contributor ,
Jun 07, 2012 Jun 07, 2012

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Not a conspiracy theorist, just annoyed that I can't deliver the product my client wants because the functionality doesn't exist.

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Community Expert ,
Jun 07, 2012 Jun 07, 2012

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Brad S. wrote:

Not a conspiracy theorist, just annoyed that I can't deliver the product my client wants because the functionality doesn't exist.

OK. I'll buy that you're not a conspiracy theorist, but to say that you can't deliver is a bit over the top. You still need Acrobat as well as ID, but you're a lot closer to the finsih line with CS6 than you were with earlier versions. As far as I know, you won't find any layout app that can do more.

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Contributor ,
Jun 07, 2012 Jun 07, 2012

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Not over the top at all. I have a 17 page form that I've spent many hours styling in ID and the client loves it, but the client also wants to be able to insert up to 36 images in this service report. The only option therefore, that I'm aware of, is to use LiveCycle and abandon all the efforts made to style the document in ID. It's impossible to deliver the experience the client wants unless of course you can direct me to the instructions on how to insert images in a PDF form without using LiveCycle. I'm all ears. And not to derail this thread further, if you could post your instructions in this thread it would be greatly appreciated... http://forums.adobe.com/thread/743823

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Community Expert ,
Jun 07, 2012 Jun 07, 2012

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Brad, I'd love to tell you how to make a "live" fillable image field in a form from ID, but I can't. I can't even tell you how to do it well in Acrobat, because as far as I know the program doesn't have that capability.

I actually wanted to create a form several years ago for a local high school reunion where the graduates could not only fill in their data, but add a photo. I asked over in Acrobat, and got an answer, but the ability to place an image didn't include the ability to scale or center it, so wasn't usable for our purposes. Live Cycle was suggested, but aside from cost as I recall we couldn't get a real PDF back that could then be printed. We ended up disributing a form built in Acrobat Pro that respondents could save as a PDF and return as an email attachment along with a photo as a separate attachment. I built a template in ID into which both were placed as links. This got old after only 80 responses, so I know how frustrating it is for you not to be able to do what you want in ID, but if you have Live Cycle available, that's probably always going to be a better choice for complex form design.

And can we ALL try to keep the conversation a bit more on the adult dialog track here?

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Community Expert ,
Jun 07, 2012 Jun 07, 2012

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Useless? What's useless is your clairvoyant look ahead to see when this feature will meet with your approval.

Bob

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Contributor ,
Jun 07, 2012 Jun 07, 2012

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Seriously Bob, that's the kind of sarcastic talk that's useless here. No one needs that kind of attitude.

From what I understand, the functionanlity that I'm needing the most, the ability for the end user to insert an image into a form, did exist in a previous version, and was removed.

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Community Expert ,
Jun 07, 2012 Jun 07, 2012

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Take your own advice Brad. You start with an attitude that what I said was useless. It's not only not useless but is correct.

I stand by it. This is the first shot at adding form tools to InDesign and a tremendous amount of work went in to it. Most users are quite happy with it...if they weren't  you'd see a lot more than one or two people complaining about it. Is it perfect? No, but nothing is.

If you think this feature is as useless as my answers you can ignore both.

Bob

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Contributor ,
Jun 07, 2012 Jun 07, 2012

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You're the one that started with the attitude with your "did it occur to you" comment. People are here looking for help, not sass.

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Contributor ,
Jun 07, 2012 Jun 07, 2012

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I think a big reason for poeple not using these forums to voice opinions, is they tend to get shot down by the evangelists, even if the points are valid.

If you look at this purely from a design utilility point of view....yes its a step in the right direction - but to announce it a major feature and miss something as vital and basic as being able to set a font in a form (don't care what the reason is) makes it feel more like a test plugin to boost sales and marketing than something tested and developed with user feedback.

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Community Expert ,
Jun 07, 2012 Jun 07, 2012

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If you’re looking for InDesign to replace LiveCycle I think you’re going to be waiting for a very, very long time.

This is a major feature upgrade (contrary to some opinions) but no feature in InDesign is intended to replace another application. SWF animations for instance are not intended to replace Flash and these form tool features aren’t intended to replace LiveCycle.

And this is a user to user forum. If you’d like to voice your concerns to Adobe you can do so here: https://www.adobe.com/cfusion/mmform/index.cfm?name=wishform

I suggest doing so with full details on not only WHAT you want but WHY.

Bob

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New Here ,
Feb 08, 2013 Feb 08, 2013

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Well, finally I got the answer for this. The functionality is completely useless in countries that use scandinavian letters (Ä,Ö,Å) - they show as cryptic symbols because the default font, and not being able to change it. I still cannot believe that it is even possible to leave out the possibility to change a font for real...

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Contributor ,
Feb 08, 2013 Feb 08, 2013

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Its clear this 'feature' was an attention grabber that in reality failed to deliver on a basic level.

Q: Is the choice of font important to users in a page/form layout app - errrm, don't know better check the wish list - c'mon!

No doubt there will be a follow up evangelist retort. All I can say is - as a user its obvious this 'feature' has been implimented 'half baked'.

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Community Expert ,
Feb 08, 2013 Feb 08, 2013

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@ Paul_Taylor,

You've been in this thread from the beginning, so you already know this feature was released at a less than perfect state because it was felt that what they could offer was better than nothing for many users (and apparently you are not one of those who finds the limited feature better than no feature), and that much of the code required to add the things that are still missing needs to come from the Acrobat team, and they don't share well.

@jahalla,

Is it really "completely" useless? Is it not faster to build the form in ID and fix the fonts in Acrobat than it would be to make the whole thing in Acrobat?

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New Here ,
Feb 08, 2013 Feb 08, 2013

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Mr Spier: my point, and no doubt for many others also, is that it is ridiculous to market this as one of the major enhancements of CS6. Come on, changing the font, how difficult can that be? It does not say in the marketing material that "yes, you can make your forms in ID, but you have to change the font in Acrobat" - luckily I downloaded the trial first, before buying.

That leads to another funny thing: I called today to the technical support abou this. Guess what they said. They told that since you have purchased only the CS5.5 and have a trial version of CS6, I cannot help you in any way... I tried to tell him that I would understand your point if I did not have the recent version purchased, and had only the trial, but it really makes no sense at this time, because I have really donloaded the trial for evaluating if I get my moneys worth by upgrading. So I got not help there...

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Community Expert ,
Feb 08, 2013 Feb 08, 2013

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jahallaa wrote:

Come on, changing the font, how difficult can that be?

It's impossible without Acrobat code that is not available to the ID team. Do you REALLY think that option would have been left out if they could have provided it, even if it was difficult?

You may have a reasonable complaint against the marketing department, but it certainly isn't valid against the developers. I've yet to need to use the form functions, but I think that even in their "limited" capabilities that are a "major" new feature comapred to waht I had to go through in the past to create forms, in the same way that I think smart guides were major.

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Community Expert ,
Feb 08, 2013 Feb 08, 2013

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The only free support Adobe provides is for installation issues with purchased versions.

If you haven't even purchased it, you have very little to complain about. Stick with whatever you have and toil away in Acrobat creating your forms.

Bob

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