Urgent Assistance Required - Problems with Reader Enabled Form

Can you provide more background? What browser/OS and version of Reader/Acrobat are the recipients using? Is the form dynamic or static? What is blank -- the emailed PDF or the PDF displayed within the browser? Is this a client-based email or web mail?

Thanks for getting back to me.

Users open the dynamic form (expandable fields) via the intranet link. They then enter data into the form fields and then either save or click on a button to email the completed form to an email address.

On opening a saved form they just get the empty form minus any of the text that they had tried to save. The same thing happens with an attached email. It just retains the form but not the content.

The form was designed in Designer 7.0 / 8.0, the browser is IE6 and the Reader version is 7.0. I used Acrobat Professional 8 to use the 'Enable Usage Rights in Acrobat Reader' function.

I have other forms created in the same way that are saving and can be emailed whilst retaining the content so I am baffled as to why this particular form has stopped working in the same way.

If it's just one specific form then I would check to see how your Submit button is configured. Is it set to send the PDF and not just XML data?

The button is set as Submit and the PDF option has been selected from the drop down. At this point the form is designed to be filled online and then emailed. The form data is then manually entered into their own database (double keying).

What point version of Reader are the recipients using (i.e., 7.0.5)? Was the form saved as Acrobat 7 (dynamic)? Can the recipients save the form locally and email? Or do their experience the same behavior?

They are using Acrobat Reader 7.0.7.

The form has been saved in Designer as Acrobat 7 (Dynamic) XML form (*.pdf).

After enabling the form in Acrobat Professional 8 I only have the option to save the form as an Acrobat PDF file.

The form can be saved locally but it will not hold any content. If the form is filled and emailed by using the submit button it will send the blank form but not the content!

I have other forms enabled in exactly the same way and they behave themselves so why this one has stopped is a mystery.

I am having exactly the same problem.
I have one form designed in LiveCycle 7 and then moved to 8.
We use Windows XP 2003 and a mixture of Acrobat Standard and Professional 7 and Reader 8.
PCs which have Reader only have the latest version, ie Reader 8.1.2.
The PBCA Submit button is not working on 3 recent installs. I've checked and they don't have any other versions of Acrobat on them other than Reader 8.

The error message is:

Acrobat does not allow connection to:
mailto:marion [dot] schweda [at] airservicesaustralia [dot] com?subject=Test PBCA FormI've read the Help screen that goes with this error message and checked the setup of the Reader that is working against those that are not and there doesn't seem to be any difference.

That is:

Edit > Preferences
Trust Manager

Allow Opening of Non-PDF File Attachments With External Applications - is ticked.

Restore Default List of Allowed and Disallowed File Attachment Types - is not enabled.

Change Settings
Let me specify - is selected by no websites are selected and I've tried setting this to Allow All Websites but it doesn't make any difference.

We use IE 7 and Outlook 2003.

Reader Usage Rights are definitely on.

Regards,
Marion

I have had Acrobat Reader 8 uninstalled and reinstalled on one PC and this has WORKED!!! Our support team couldn't see any difference between what they uninstalled and installed. I am now getting my two other problem PCs done and will report back. They are all brand new DELL towers with fresh installs.

Our corporate maintenance program is automated so Adobe patches, etc are downloaded to our PCs on a weekly basis.

Has anybody else figured out anything?

Ultimately, when I deploy the form, if I find that it fails with some Readers, I'll just get users to email it as an attachment and then import it into the dataset. That should work.

Regards, Marion

It's not the form. It's the tool used to create the form. Reader Enablement, and all that goes along with it, is primarily designed to be used with AcroForms based technology. Not LiveCycle Designer (LCD) forms.

Under the covers there are two form technologies at play here. AcroForms - which has been part of the Acrobat system since the 3.15 update. And XFA based forms, which came with the LiveCycle product lines. LCD/XFA forms are only to be used with the LiveCycle products. Acrobat (Pro) has little difficulty with them because the techology is baked into the product. Adobe Reader would have no difficulty had they been enabled by LiveCycle's Reader Extensions tool. However, an XFA form enabled with Acrobat, well, it's just not going to fly very well.

I'm not going to get into a 'Adobe whould'a, should'a, could'a' discussion here. Not because it's pointless, but because it belongs in a different forum.

OK - What to do about this? Redesign the form using Acrobat 8's built-in forms tools. Yes, it's work. Better to rework than unhappy customers. While it does not contain the high-level, full-featured form design and layout tool that LCD does, there isn't a whole lot you can't do with AcroForms based technology (including some JavaScript coding) that you can with LCD. You create the submit buttons, Reader Enablement, etc. using Acrobat and you shouldn't have any problems with customers using Reader being able to fill out the forms.

Like always, test before production.

In the near future, I would recomend that you upgrade to Acrobat 9 as soon as it becomes available. There are a large number of AcroForms based additions, extensions and other such improvements that will well make the the investment pay off.

Suffice it to say that there are a number of us 'so called experts' that have long and deep discussions surrounding just this sort of confusion between AcroForms and XFA. What belongs where, capabilities, etc.

One last bit of note - be sure to read through the Acrobat EULA regarding where and how you can use Acrobat Reader Enabled forms.

I hope this helps. Do not hesitate to holler if you have any additional questions.

Thanks
-Doug

One would have thought then they would have added a 'Reader Enablement' feature inside 'LCD' in version 9 since LCD is the better product. There are alot of us that use LCD and don't want to give up those capabilities.

Doug, thank you for your informative answer.

Re: the licensing issue, I've had my own little rant on that matter on another thread.

I share scottsheck's view but I can't see why Adobe even bothers with LCD if it doesn't integrate well with major products from the Adobe family. It seems like LCD is treated as the runt of the litter and it has been a waste of resources learning to manage its little quirks and idiosyncracies.

It looks as though the licensing issue will kill any further development of PDF forms anyway so learning to recreate a whole bunch of forms using Acro-Forms will be unnecessary.

It's taken me since November or last year to teach myself LifeCycle Designer and design my four page complex form. I wasn't allowed to get Adobe 8 initially so started in 7 and then finally got Professional 8. And now you're saying I should re-design in Acrobat!!! I can't remember how I figured out how to do half the things I've done never mind do it again in another tool.

Nevermind, I'll just use a work around. Re-installing Adobe Reader has worked for me in both cases. It seems odd that the PCs with the problem all came from the same batch and the same round of installs. And, as I said, if all else fails, users can just send me the form as an attachment and I can add it to the data set.

Can I just get this straight?
1. Forms designed in LiveCycle Designer with the reader useage rights switched on in Acrobat may or may not work with reader.
2. Your recommendation is to re-design the form in Acrobat.

Upgrading to Adobe 9 - if I keep my LiveCycle Designer form, will the application of the Reader useage stuff be more stable?

I seem to remember that the reason I designed the form in LiveCycle Designer was because I couldn't get Acrobat Prof 7 to do what I wanted.

Many thanks for the explanation. It may not be practical but it is helpful.

Regards, Marion

Sorry for bringing this topic up again but I'm trying to understand if this is the same problem I'm experiencing!

I have developed some forms using LiveCycle 8.05.2073.1.374024 - part of Adobe Design Standard CS3.

When I went to apply reader rights using LiveCycle Reader Extensions 7.0 I received the following message:

Error 442: Selected file failed to open as a
PDF 'com.adobe.document.pdf.PDFOperationFailure:
IDL:com/adobe/document/pdf/PDFOperationFailure:1.0'.

Until this past week I didn't have these issues... What can I do to resolve them?

This sounds more like a compatibility issue with Designer 8 and LiveCycle Reader Extensions 7. There is more detail on this in the article [url=http://www.adobe.com/devnet/livecycle/articles/designer8_lc72.php]Using Adobe LiveCycle Designer 8 with the Adobe LiveCycle 7.2 release[/url].