When Form data is entered and emailed back, Form opens sans data!

Can the person who saved the form reopen it and see the data?? Did they email the wrong form? Did you try to open the filled PDF in an earlier version of Acrobat?? And did it show the data? Can you verify whether or not the form is LiveCycle?

If the form is LiveCycle then filling it on Standard 6 might be a problem. LiveCycle was new in Acrobat 6 and I don't know if there is a problem. However, if the form was enabled for Reader, then they can use a newer version to open and fill it. Bummer about the old Standard 6. But at least there is an option.

If the form is a regular AcroForm, instead of a LiveCycle form, then it should have the data in it regardless of version of software used to fill it.

When an AcroForm is Enabled for Reader with Acrobat 8 it should work back to Reader 6. At least for the data saving. But regardless, if it was filled in with Standard, the versions shouldn't matter. If the data is saved with the form, then it should be there when the form is opened.

Once you answer the questions above we'll have a better idea of what happened.

Thom Parker
The source for PDF Scripting Info
[url=http://www.pdfScripting.com]pdfscripting.com[/url]

The Acrobat JavaScript Reference, Use it Early and Often
[url=http://www.adobe.com/devnet/acrobat/javascript.php]http://www.adobe.com/devnet/acrobat/javascript.php[/url]

Hi Thom, thanks so much for your reply.

The person who filled it out CAN surprisingly reopen it and see their entered data, and I did double check to ensure they were emailing me the right (completed) form file and they verified they were. As you know, when I open their completed form it is blank. The funny thing is when they send me the blank file that they claim to have filled it in 6.0 Standard, I can fill in a few fields in my 8.0 Pro, email it back to them and they can see what I've filled in (but they no longer see what they've filled in!).

I tried editing the form, and Adobe asked me to save and it was going to LiveCycle, so I would say that it definitely WAS created in LiveCycle and from how it sounds, 6.0 Standard can't save form data entered if it was created in LiveCycle, correct? (question #1)

On Friday I enabled it for Reader to see if that would make a difference, so I emailed it to her and she filled in a few details of the 'new'ly enabled form, and then emailed it back to me and it still came back blank.

I'm at the point now where I think it's best to recreate the form from scratch and not use LiveCycle. Previously, I was new to creating forms and I thought LiveCycle was the only way. Of course I've learned all about creating/editing forms in the Acrobat version I have now without using LiveCycle. It's very easy and user friendly. In your opinion, that sounds like my only option to have the most users be able to complete my form, yes? I should recreate it? (question #2)

This weekend I sent a test doc (enabled in Reader and not created in LiveCycle) to the same computer and they were able to complete the two questions on the form and send it back and I opened it and it was complete. Success! But still would like your feedback on my two questions before I recreate a form that's already made. :)

Thanks again for your help,
Annie

First, watch these videos on creating your first form in Acrobat (not LiveCycle)

http://www.pdfscripting.com/public/112.cfm

You might also want to go the the "Free Videos" page on the same site (www.pdfscripting.com) and watch the fist couple of tutorials on "Form Scripting Basics".

As for the questions:

#1. I haven't tested Acrobat Standard 6 against an XFA (LiveCycle) form created with Designer 8.2 (ships with Acrobat 9). However it wouldn't suprise me if the form didn't work in 6. The XFA functionality was snuck into Acrobat 6 Pro(I dont know about Standard), so it was minimal. LiveCycle forms weren't offically released until Acrobat 7. And there were major changes in XFA in every new version after that.

#2. If I were you, I'd recreate the form as a regular AcroForm. You can use auto form field recognition. So hopefully this won't be an onerous task.

Thom Parker
The source for PDF Scripting Info
[url=http://www.pdfScripting.com]pdfscripting.com[/url]

The Acrobat JavaScript Reference, Use it Early and Often
[url=http://www.adobe.com/devnet/acrobat/javascript.php]http://www.adobe.com/devnet/acrobat/javascript.php[/url]

We had a similar issue here. Just in case it will help someone else, I will post this solution.
A user would receive an email with a pdf form attached. They would then fill it out and save it while still in Outlook. OUtlook uses a temporary OLK folder to save changes to email attachments. However, sometimes it would change the name of the file and the user would inadvertently be saving the file to a different name. Then when they forwarded the email, the attachment would not have their changes in it. Solution is to watch when the OLK folder opens after user tries to save the attachment and select the file with the correct name from inside the OLK folder.