Form field data not visible

How are you building and populating the PDFs? With iText, the PDF Lib, or some custom thing you are doing?

This is really a developer question and way beyond this forum. But I do have an idea.

You say that when the form is displayed in Acrobat, and you put the focus on one of the form fields, the data becomes visible.

Try changing the Field's font. Just the font and only the font. If the data is visible after this change you have a malformed PDF. When you change the font, Acrobat rebuilds part of the internal structure and that fixes the problem. Specifically, the font specified in the /DR (default resources) key of the AcroForm dictionary is either non existant or a direct object. Either situation will cause exactly what you are seeing.

We have considered and tested the infamous font theory and found there is truth to it. We are still attempting to exorcise the evil font gnomes from the documents and have had some success. It is however spotty. None the less the key to victory is near.

I have been able to get data to show but the problem is not fixed. I am new at this firm so bare with me. The users have Acrobat v7 on their machines. I have v5 and the server that builds the documents runs v4. I do not know why the users and the server are on such different versions but I do know I have v5 because that is the version of the SDK that was used to develop the app. When I create a .pdf file I can see the data. Users with v7 cannot see the data on files I create. Users on v7 who create files cannot see data and I cannot see the data from their files. It seems that even though the server is building the .pdf files there is some sort of "instruction" coming from the user machine that affects the file and font visibility and even though I can see data these "instructions" interefer with v7 users. Any ideas?

We have two sides to this system. One side does foriegn policies and the other does supermarkets. The foriegn side is fine. The difference is the forms for the foriegn side were scanned as TIFF images, converted then had the fields added. The pdf files for the supermarket side were created from MSWord documents. I scanned one to a TIFF file and created it the same way the foriegn side was done and it works. Curse you Bill Gates.

First, earlier versions of Acrobat are more fogiving of variations in the PDF's internal format than older versions. So it's no supprise that Acrobat 5 displays the field data and Acrobat 7 does not.

You state that "server that builds the documents runs v4..." and "Users on v7 who create files cannot see data". Do you mean that the user's on V7 used to server to create the PDFs? In that case thier local version of Acrobat is irrelevant to the creation process. The local version only comes into play when the PDF is viewed locally.

Also, I'm not sure what coversion tools were available in the days of Acrobat 4, but I'd be willing to bet that it's a 3rd party tool, and not acrobat that's doing the conversion. In either case, form fields would still have to be added to the PDF after conversion from Word. If this was done manually with Acrobat, even Acrobat 4, then the fields would work properly in Acrobat 7. So there is something going on here that you haven't mentioned. How are the fields added to the MSWord converted Forms?

On this same note. What is the process that involves the server and Acrobat 4? You do know that using Acrobat on a server is forbidden by the EULA? And since you just mentioned it on a public forum, your complay may be subject to legal action from Adobe.

First: the agreement DOES allow it to run on a server. We have already been through this with some one from Adobe today and we did a screen shot of their agreement and sent it to them and they clearly DO allow it to run on a server. Go read the agreement. The key is the users must have their own licensed copies on their machines - which they do.

Regardless, we are canning Adobe for a .net pdf solution. This app will be moth-balled in about 4-5 weeks. Adobe served us well but it is time to move on.

Second: I called the machine a server but it is really just a user machine with a database on it used for updates.

Also: the pdf files do get viewed on the user machines.

Everything is done with DCOM. It is all pure-bread Acrobat.

I rescanned the documents as TIFF files, converted them and placed the fields on them and it works so the MSWord conversion was the problem.