Form Text Appears Hidden When Returned

Have you or anyone found a solution?
I am having the same problem and have narrowed it down to only Mac users.
My form was created in Windows and opened in Windows.

Edit: Bizarre! Exact same thing when I edit the field.

No answer yet!

To add to the fire...the users of the form apparently are having no problem filling out the form as they are sending it in. It's just when we open it we are seeing the phantom page.

To see the information entered, we're having to open the returned form in Acrobat, highlight all of the fields, and then click properties and click on the current font color...as if confirming we want to see it in black, which is bizarre. Then once saved again...the form data stays put.

John.

I am having the same issue. I created a form using Acrobat Pro 9 on a Macintosh (Leopard OS). The form seemed to work fine a couple of weeks ago on both the Mac and PC platforms, but then yesterday someone submitted the form and their data did not appear when the document was opened in Acrobat Pro 9 or Adobe Reader 9. When clicking on each field, the data would appear but would not print. However, if I open the form in the Mac application "Preview," then the data does appear and prints. The form in question was completed by a PC user and opened on a Mac.

As suggested by others in this forum, I opened the form in Acrobat Pro 9 and edited each field so that it did not have a "fill." I didn't create the form with any fills, but going back and reconfirming the "no fill" selection for each field did the trick and made the data visible.... a very painstakingly tedious process!

Just a question about your fix...which sounds T E R R I F I C...
Are you saying reopening the form..reconfirming the "no fill" selection for each field and saving it fixes the master blank form from future data loss (the next time someone opens it and fills it in)...or are you saying this is the way to recover once the data has been entered?

I really REALLY wish Adobe would address this...as it is obviously seems to be an issue with the latest Reader update.

In my case, I opened the form that had been returned to me by a PC user, went into edit form mode using Acrobat Pro 9, and edited each field by reconfirming "no fill." This fixed the issue for that ONE document only.

I haven't tried opening the original form document yet and fixing it by reconfirming the fields. If I do this and it works, then I will update my post.

I really hope Adobe repairs this problem, too!!

I was under the impression that if I fill my text field white, I won't run into this problem.

Still for me, it's only been a problem when Mac users fill in the form.
Doesn't seem to be an issue with PCs.

Form created and opened on a PC.

@stevens - Filling the text field white...that's interesting and will give that a try.

Actually I've seen it occur on a PC as well...but infrequently.

Last week, I did an Acrobat.com screen share with an applicant who was having trouble and actually watched it happen. In his case, what seemed to work was (and I hate to throw another wrench into the works)...once the form was completed, he saved it under a different file name...and that preserved his work.

For some reason would not overwrite the original file...even after getting a warning that he was about to overwrite the file.

Thanks for your continued comment on this.

Did this ever get fixed. I badly need a fix for the same problem. I get the same results on a form I have that has 12-15 fields and I have 15+ forms with this problem, mostly from Mac users and am on a major deadline. Don't have time to go through every single box. Please help!

You don't have to go field by field. You can select all of them by selecting the Select Object tool, setting the view to continous, and pressing Ctrl+A.

Duh! Should have thought of that! Thanks so much. Now I can fix them all in a minute or two.

Hello Everyone!!!
Yes, I too have this problem and was wondering if anyone had an update on it as I have hundreds of these forms with 5 text fields.

Any information would be greatly appreciated!!!

Cheers!

Thought I was going crazy with this data appearing and disappearing. Your work-around worked great. Does Adobe know about this?

Thank you for the post.

I actually just posted a topic on this after not finding it under my terminology during a search of the forums. - http://www.acrobatusers.com/forums/aucbb/viewtopic.php?pid=60400#p60400

I have the same issue, but my initial circumstances are a little different. My form was initially created on the Mac w/ AcroPro 8.1, and the end-users are windows users - and are performing a "save as" per a JS button on the form with a different filename.

NOW, the ONLY time that this "disappearing text" seems to happen is when I edit the form - [b]changing any text fields[/b] - using Preview for Mac [i](Snow Leopard)[/i]. Previously, I was using my AcroPro 8.1 to make any changes to the fields, and was not having this issue.

So, after seeing this thread, I am curious if it has anything to do specifically with the use of Preview at any point in the entry process.

Thoughts?

lnail

We've just run into the same problem, but we're all PC-based -- most of our users run 8.2 Pro, and we in the Documentation Team now use 9 Pro.

We have a form that's been in use by numerous people over the last 8 months, but just yesterday one remote user complained that when she filled in a text field and tabbed to the next field, the text she had entered disappeared. If she clicked back into the filled-in field, the text appeared again. From her description, it seemed to be a focus issue.

However, we opened her form on three different machines in our office and we got three different behaviors.

- On one machine, there was no problem -- the text she had entered appeared correctly.

- On another machine, the text in each field appeared only when that field had the focus.

- And on a third machine, you had to click in the field to see the text, but it remained visible when the focus moved to another field.

We found that when we opened her filled-in form in form editing mode and changed the *font* of each individual form field, the text became visible again. Made no sense whatsoever.

I suspected that it wasn't specifically the font , but just the action of resetting some property or other, and the experience of resetting the border/fill color seems to bear that out. It's not a particularly useful fix for us; we can't have the form owner going in and editing form fields, or sending forms to us just so we can make the data visible.

And saving it under a different name doesn't seem to make a difference here.

If anybody comes up with a fix, hopefully they'll let us know!

Caroline

I had this problem too and I found a solution online that worked for me.

Go to:

Forms--->Manage Form Data-->Export Form Datathen open the exported data and save it as a pdf.

I'm so glad I found this post, as we thought we were not going to be able to print our the completed forms we had been sent.

It appears to be a problem with when you have fields which have scrollng text, as we have created other forms where we do not allow scrolling text and they come back with no problems.

Check this blog post by Joel Geraci.

http://blogs.adobe.com/pdfdevjunkie/script_to_fix_mac_osx_previewa.php

I used the script he provides to fix a form that these problems.

Am struggling with same issues and am grateful to find this post with all the helpful links/solutions. Have not encountered the Mac/Preview problem, but have encountered invisible text when forms have been completed on PC with Adobe 6.0 or earlier OR completed with PDF XChange viewer.

Am not able to edit the form in Adobe, it takes me straight to LiveCycle Designer, and have tried modifying text/background colors but with no luck. This does not happen on forms completed in Adobe Reader 7.0 or higher.

Tried exporting data, it created XML file, but was not able to open as PDF or import it or even find the data within the XML.

Very clunky workaround is to open in PDF XChange viewer, print to AdobePDF, perform OCR, select responses, copy/paste into new form. Very clunky and slow, but haven't had success yet with other solutions. Maybe I am missing something, hopefully someone might be able to spot where I'm going wrong, and at a minimum wanted to add the PC conditions that so far seem to return the hidden text. Thank you.

I'm having the same problem, it's since the last update a week or two back. I also can't put music in the background of birthday cards I send out to people without the huge music player window image appearing on top of the card. Prior to the update I could make any card I wanted, photo or drawing and place the happy birthday song in the background so that as soon as the PDF was opened the music would play, now they get a big play button in the middle of a player window on top of whatever image I use.