Hyperlinks not going in correct tab order!!!

Not a fix - just some information.

PDF hyperlinks are an "annotation" and not a "form field";
so, hyperlinks will not appear in the pane the shows the order of form fields.

Be well...

If you need to have a hyperlink in the field tab order, you can add a field with the hyperlink action associated with the mouse up action for that field.

Thanks for the responses!
It seems to already pick the hyperlinks up as fields, but it won't go into the tab order so i can put it into the correct order.... i have no idea

That is your opinion.

I contend it is a link object that is not a form field field object. And the definitions and object descriptions in the PDF Reference standard and Acrobat JavaScript reference are quite different for these 2 elements or objects. Links are considered as part of the PDF content and are in a separate object class and form fields are part of the field object. The LiveCycle Designer, a form creation program that creates and edits XML forms, does not even have the capability to create a link, but can only create a form field with a link action.

Newer versions of Acrobat can create 'links' from plain text URLs found in the PDF content and these 'links' can not be accessed by the link tool or any of the form tools.

The 'Tab Order' is for the very strict form objects as identified as form objects in the PDF Reference Manual.

Okay thanks. How do you change a link object into a form field link then? I have only just started using the program so I am not to sure.

You'd create form field that has an "action" associated with it that is to follow the specified link.
(What George said earlier .)
You'd remove the existing Link annotations and replace them with the appropriate form field.


Be well...

thankyou very much :)

When working in Adobe Acrobat Pro 9, if you create a hyperlink either before or after the text fields are added, IT WILL change your tab order. I understand the link is not a form field but apparently Acrobat does not know it and Acrobat messes with the tab order that has been established.

I also have been having this problem. I even created the hyperlinks to the text while still in InDesign and after converting it to a Acrobat PDF hoping that would take care of the problem and it didn't.

I had not thought about creating a form field over the text I need a hyperlink too but will be giving it a try. If it doesn't work how I need it to I am going to give up as all I was trying to do is make it easier for the user to view specific policies and procedures we have inhouse.

You can create a form field with a link action so the link action is now form filed and not a link annotation. One needs to be careful with plain text links because these items are not links and not fields.

I have added text boxes on top of other text that made the page go crazy when I tried to change it. Now these text boxes are in the tab order but in bad places. When the cursor is at the bottom of page 2 and you press the tab key, the next field in the tab order is the text box on the top of page 1. Like the hyperlinks, the text boxes do not show in the tab order where you can grab them and move them to a more appropriate place. Is there any way to change the tab order of the text boxes or to take they completely out of the tab order?

Thanks,

Mike

Text boxes are annotations or comments and not a form field. They also require a special setting to print, unlike form fields.

You can only change the tab order of form fields.

Create a text form field and set the tab order of the fields.

George,

Thanks for your response but I don't think you answered my question which is, "How can I get these comment fields out of the tab order?" I know that putting these text boxes over existing text is not a good idea. But, when I try to make even a simple edit to the existing text, the whole page is adversely affected.

Thanks,

Mike

Are you trying to use the Text Touch Up tool?

The annotation text box goes over the content layer.

There are also a number of different boxes that are part of a PDF. There is a media, crop, art, bleed, etc.

Acrobat is not a product designed for authoring, creating or editing a source document. If you need to edit the content of a PDF, the best approach is to go back the original file the PDF was created or printed from.

George,

I'm working on a seven page employment application form. It started as a Microsoft Word document. I used the Acrobat form wizard to turn it into a PDF. I have invested several days of work into fixing the hiccups caused by the conversion process. At this point, it is not practical to go back to the Word document and start over.

When I have tried to edit some of the text using the touch up text tool, it does not work properly. When I place my cursor and try to make a small correction, the whole page is negatively affected. The only solution I could come up with is overlaying a comment box on top of the text that needs to be corrected. It all seems to work fine except when tabbing through the fields, the comment boxes become part of the tab order which is very confusing to the user. The cursor tabs through all of the fields on each page and then tabs through the comment boxes which are at the top of the page.

When you go to the form editing mode, you can see the tab order of all of the other fields and you can move them around if they are not the way you want them. But the comment fields do not show in this list of fields. Why are the comment fields in the tab order but not in the list where the user can change them?

Once again, my question is, "How can I get these comment fields out of the tab order?" Or do you have any other suggestions for solving this tab order problem other than starting over from the beginning?

Thanks,

Mike

As I have and others have stated, Acrobat is a very poor editor. Use of the Text Touch Up Tool can be very difficult since the PDF format does not place text by character on a line, in a sentence or in a paragraph. PDF only knows characters and position on the page and has no line flow function. You need to practice edits. I have even inserted characters in a location past the location where I want it to replace an existing character, deleting the unwanted characters and then inserting the characters I did not want to delete. I have even used the Redaction Tool to remove or replace text, add a form field or comment to insert the text, and then flatten the page to make the form field or comment part of the PDF content layer. Note, this type of action needs to be completed prior to adding another comments or form fields. Applying this technique also is a very limited editing function and only a limited number of changes can be made to any line.

There are even post about how to edit or replace the content layer of a PDF and retain the form fields and comments, so a lot of form work including complex JavaScrpts are not lost. Some of these techniques also allow the insertion of some very long combo boxes.

If you are going to attempt to edit a PDF, you need to have a good understanding of this file format and many or all of the features this format can provide and how to use the tools and features provided. You may need to think outside of the MS Word editing mode.

George,

Thanks for all the useful information. I guess the answer to my question is that it is not possible to remove comment fields from the tab order or to control the tab order of the comments fields.

Mike

Mike,

Editing the Word document, generating a new PDF, and replacing the existing page contents with the new pages is really the way to go. If you aren't going to do that, you can copy the form fields that you've added to a temporary document, remove them from your form, and then flatten the pages. This will convert the text comments you've added to regular page contents so they are no long comments, so they won't be tabbed to. You can flatten using PDF Optimizer, Preflight, or by executing the following JavaScript in the interactive JavaScript console:

flattenPages();

Once the document is flattened, copy the form fields back into the document from the temporary document, or use "Document > Replace Pages" to replace the pages of the temporary document with the pages of the flattened document. You may need to repositions the fields after doing this.

Georges (Kaiser and Johnson),

I figured out a way to solve the problem I was having. Instead of using comments, I'm using text box input fields and setting them to read only with a backgroud color of white. This takes them out of the tab order. Then I place them on top of the bad text that was not editable and lock them so the user cannot move them. I think this idea may help a lot of other people who are struggling with the same problem.

I'm curious to know what you think of this.

Mike

Hopefully you have set the default value or the field will clear and leave a blank. Also the converging the bad text by a field does not eliminate that text from a search, and the text of the field might not be picked up by a search. Also make the field read only or the field can be edited by others.

Using redaction to remove the bad text or area where the text is located and replacing with the desired text, solves all the above problems.

A better workflow, would allow you to flatten the form field text before you add the needed form fields. But as previously noted, you can make an editing copy of the PDF without form fields, and then once corrected, replace the pages of the PDF with your form fields and document scripts.