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Form fields rotate 270 degrees when moved/copied

sophia11
Registered: May 21 2007
Posts: 2

Hello all, my first post to the forums.

I created a form template in Word/Mac, saved as PDF and brought into Acrobat 8 Pro/Mac to add form fields. Now I want to replace one of the underlying pages. Whenever I replace the page, all the form fields rotate 270 degrees. In addition, if I open up the field properties and switch the orientation back to 0 degrees, the text orientation changes but the size of the form field remains shifted (a vertical vs. horizontal landscape), meaning I would have to resize every field.

I've tried every way that I can think of to make this change, all with the same results...I've inserted a new page and copied and pasted the fields, I've copied and pasted from one document to another...I've replaced all pages of the form instead of just one page. I get the same results on different computers and with different versions of Acrobat (tried 7 and 8).

Can anyone help? According to Acrobat documentation, there shouldn't be any restrictions on moving or coping form fields and certainly, a 270 shift can't be normal behavior. I also tried rotating the whole document to see if I could work around the bug but no matter what the page orientation, the fields always rotate 270 degrees in relation.

If anyone could offer suggestions or work-arounds, I would really appreciate it. I'm faced with the distinct possibility that I will have to recreate 200+ fields every time I want to adjust the page underneath.

Thanks in advance,

Angelique

lkassuba
ExpertTeam
Registered: Jun 28 2007
Posts: 3636
Not sure why the fields are rotating when you copy them, however, a simple workaround is to select all the fields in the Field Navigation pane in Acrobat. Then right-click and select Properties and rotate them back in one step.

Also, you might try "Tagging" your form when you create it from Word to see if this corrects the orientation/copy problem.

Lori Kassuba is an AUC Expert and Community Manager for AcrobatUsers.com.

mcorson66
Registered: Mar 27 2008
Posts: 9
I am having the SAME exact problem as well. However it is only with one particular document. A client created the Word Document and I printed to ADobe PDF printer to convert to PDF. I get all my fields that I copy over rotated to 270 as well. I'm thinking there must be something in the original word document causing it but I'm not sure what. All my other forms that I have converted work fine.

Michelle
gkaiseril
Expert
Registered: Feb 23 2006
Posts: 4308
This is caused by the rotation of pages during the creation of the PDFs. See [url=http://www.acrobatusers.com/tutorials/2007/10/auto_placement_annotations/ /Automating placement of annotations Converting coordinates in Acrobat[/url]for a discussion of how Arcobat addresses space within a PDF and how to rotate annotations, fields, links, etc.

George Kaiser

mcorson66
Registered: Mar 27 2008
Posts: 9
Thank you for the link but I still dont' understand it. I have a PDF that has no fields on it. Looks fine. I take a text field from another form (about 30 characters wide), place it on this new form and it is rotated. That does not make sense to me. I do this with other forms all the time. Why would Adobe rotate it on just this one?

I guess I'm just missing something.
gkaiseril
Expert
Registered: Feb 23 2006
Posts: 4308
PDF forms have a hidden form layer upon which all field are placed. This space is layed out with the unrotated space of the original page, but the displayed page is rotated.

It is easier to use the page replace the page with that has the form fields with the new page without the form fields not only because the rotation of the fields in handled, but all the JavaScripts of the original form are retained.

George Kaiser