Preview does not support PDF features

Yes, unfortunately, Preview is limited by Adobe's open sourcing of its PDF format. It hasn't open sourced all the features. If you try Adobe Acrobat Reader, you may get better support for these functions, assuming they've made the plugins available for the Mac.

And before you say it isn't a good substitute, there is one thing you can do with the Mac OS X PDF functions that is difficult to find for free in the PC world. Print to PDF. It saves documents from almost any applications in acrobat reader format. Calculations and forms may not be preserved, but the print layout itself is preserved. With every iteration of Mac OS X there have been a few more features added to Preview, so I can't say if calculations are there, since I've never found a document that has them.

Bobbbo wrote:
Adobe Reader is free so why compete with a free application??

For me, Preview does a far better job of it. It opens PDFs quickly, navigates through them quickly, and the interface is clean. I installed Reader one time and it found it was bloated and slow, and it also broke a whole bunch of features I had been using (like displaying inline PDFs in web pages, for example). I got rid of it quickly. I wouldn't put it back on my Mac unless I needed to use some feature that Apple Preview doesn't offer (which seems to be the case for you right now.)

Mac users are free to download and use Adobe Reader if they want or need to. You might want to include with your PDFs a link to Adobe's Reader for Mac download site and mention that Mac users are going to need to download and use it in order to properly fill out the PDF forms that you have made for them.

Bobbbo wrote:
The issue I have run into is that Adobe has generated a way that you can distribute forms to a large group of people, they can in return send back the data that they filled out. Acrobat can then tabulate the data automatically. It is a very powerful tool.

I don't doubt it. However, it is a purely Acrobat solution. I'm sure there is other software that can do the same thing. Have you considered a web site instead? You could build an HTML page to distribute to people and it would have all the same features. Plus, it would work with any web browser.

The problem I have is Apple has decided to make Preview their default PDF reader application. When a Mac users opens the PDF file things may not work and they do not understand why. They get frustrated and quit filling out the form, therefore locking out getting data from all Mac users. This is an unnecessary burden to put on Mac users!

Then why don't you pick a method that would work with a stock MacOS X machine?

Adobe Reader is free so why compete with a free application??

Adobe Reader is free for end users to download. If Apple included it as part of MacOS X, the would have to pay Adobe many millions of dollars. Furthermore, while Acrobat Reader does have many nice features, it is a slow, bloated behemoth that fewer and fewer people want to use anymore. That is why there are so many other PDF viewers these days - people don't like Acrobat Reader.

I just think they should not have a fully functional PDF reader as the default application for PDFs.

Preview is fully functional. But Apple can't read Adobe's mind and support every new feature that Adobe throws in to try to keep customers. Your PDF solution is an Adobe solution. Adobe software just isn't as ubiquitous as it used to be. Times change. I suggest you look into some other method of form distribution, such as HTML and Javascript.

Bobbbo wrote:
As I stated earlier, I was just asking if there was a Preview solution. It appears there is not so people want me to throw away all my work and come up with a Web Site solution that requires more work.

Not web site, web page. You could construct an HTML page with Javascript that works exactly like the PDF. I think Adobe actually uses Javascript themselves. But, yes, it would require all new work.

The features (which are many) that are broken have been around since the early 2000s. Being that they are not new and was surprised Apple do not include them.

But as a brody pointed out, not all PDF features are open-source. Apple would have to pay royalties to Adobe to support proprietary and/or patented Adobe technologies - assuming of course that Adobe would be willing to license such technologies to a competitor.

So my solution is to ignore unsuspecting Mac users in my survey or put a note on the form telling them they must user Adobe Reader for the form to work.

If you restrict your tool to one particular vendor's product, then your survey is only going to be a sample of customers of that product. Recent versions of Adobe Reader are pretty invasive programs. Plus, the Mac versions work so poorly that if you really need those features, you have to run it under Windows anyway.

I can't help with either Adobe or Apple or their turf wars. I can suggest ways to improve your response rate and user satisfaction with future such surveys.

You can always change the default application:

http://www.ehow.com/how4493225change-default-programs-mac-os.html