PDF form won't calculate in Preview

Question

PDF form won't calculate in Preview

I've set up an Acrobat form that has a few subtotal and total fields. They work totally fine in Acrobat, and I can *fill out* the form fields in Preview and save it just fine, but the fields aren't auto-calculating. Any reason why this would be the case???

Mac OS X (10.6.2)

Posted on Mar 26, 2010 6:20 PM

Reply

Answer 1

Mar 28, 2010 12:35 PM in response to Jennifer Mitchell1

Another thing I just noticed - when Preview makes me "Save as...", it UNSETS the radio form element. ... ***? Is this an Acrobat setting on the form?

I REALLY need Preview to be able to work on this form, why won't Preview save radio options??

Reply

Answer 2

Mar 31, 2010 7:38 PM in response to Jennifer Mitchell1

Hey all,

Come on, guys, discovering more problems here... Preview also won't automatically resize the font size when the text is longer than the text field. It automatically turns into multi-line even though multi-line is specifically NOT checked.

Acrobat Reader works fine, as does opening the file in the browser.

How come Preview is SO substandard in implementing standard Adobe features??? Is this normal or is this just my computer?

Reply

Answer 3

etresoft

Level 9

56,308 points

Mar 31, 2010 8:15 PM in response to Jennifer Mitchell1

Jennifer Mitchell1 wrote:
How come Preview is SO substandard in implementing standard Adobe features??? Is this normal or is this just my computer?

It is normal, but I wouldn't call Preview substandard. No one other than Adobe implements saving data in fill-in forms. I don't know if no one else wants to bother or if Adobe won't license the technology and/or patents. Perhaps Apple doesn't want all the new viruses that come with this active technology inside PDF documents. Adobe has been trying to force its software on people by creating new versions of PDF that only work in Acrobat.

While Acrobat forms are a really cool feature, they have been greatly hobbled by Adobe's requirement of the full Acrobat version for saving any data. Adobe's Mac version of Acrobat does a really poor job with fill-in forms anyway. They are badly misaligned. Most people just use Preview's annotation features instead.

Reply

Answer 4

Mar 31, 2010 8:23 PM in response to etresoft

etresoft wrote:
It is normal, but I wouldn't call Preview substandard. No one other than Adobe implements saving data in fill-in forms.

See, but Preview does allow forms to be saved - it allows text fields to save, but not checkboxes or radio boxes. It doesn't make sense to allow some things and not others.

I've had no problems at all creating the forms on the Mac, I've only had problems filling them out. Acrobat free version for Mac works fine, just not Preview...

Reply

Answer 5

etresoft

Level 9

56,308 points

Mar 31, 2010 8:37 PM in response to Jennifer Mitchell1

Jennifer Mitchell1 wrote:
See, but Preview does allow forms to be saved - it allows text fields to save, but not checkboxes or radio boxes. It doesn't make sense to allow some things and not others.

That must be something Apple has recently added. I could swear that this didn't used to work. I just tried it and it works great - much better than it seems to work for you. I have no problems saving text fields or checkboxes. I am using 10.6.2 on this machine.

I've had no problems at all creating the forms on the Mac, I've only had problems filling them out. Acrobat free version for Mac works fine, just not Preview...

Seems to be fixed in 10.6.2.

Reply

Answer 6

Apr 1, 2010 12:14 AM in response to etresoft

etresoft wrote:
That must be something Apple has recently added. I could swear that this didn't used to work. I just tried it and it works great - much better than it seems to work for you. I have no problems saving text fields or checkboxes. I am using 10.6.2 on this machine.

Thanks, I checked my 10.6.2 machine (Preview 5) and the checkbox saved. (It did not save in Preview 4 on 10.5). Unfortunately, the calculated fields still didn't work, nor did the automatic font/scrolling text. Does this happen for other people as well? etre, do you have a form you could check this with?

Reply

Answer 7

etresoft

Level 9

56,308 points

Apr 1, 2010 5:57 AM in response to Jennifer Mitchell1

Jennifer Mitchell1 wrote:
etre, do you have a form you could check this with?

No. I just downloaded some random form from the Internet. How do you implement those other features? Is that using Javascript? If so, that may never be implemented due to security concerns. It sounds like you are pushing the envelope with fill-in PDF forms.

Reply