This weekend I had the opportunity to discover a PDF form which wasn’t displaying properly in Adobe Reader. Upon further investigation I found out that the cause of the problem was Preview.app on OSX. Preview edits forms but corrupts them when saving so that the fields appear blank in Adobe Reader. The data is still there, but it’s not visible. You saved a form in Preview. It’s not your fault, you didn’t know better.

Now the form looks blank in Adobe Reader. Don’t worry though, we’re about to get it back. The first script I found requires Adobe Acrobat, but doesn’t work with Reader. Eventually I found this website with a solution for Adobe Reader. Paste it into TextEdit and then convert to Plain Text (Format -> Make Plain Text).

Make the script into plain text Save it to your Desktop as fix_forms.js Or just. Now we need to create the destination folder and copy it. On OSX it needs to go in: /Users/ YourUserName/Library/Application Support/Adobe/Acrobat/11.0/JavaScripts On Windows it needs to go in: C: Users George AppData Roaming Adobe Acrobat 11.0 JavaScripts You will need to create the JavaScripts directory.

See Acrobat's current editing pane below, with 'Edit PDF' on the right: Image via Adobe. As you can see from the instructions above, you need to install the program, Adobe Acrobat. Don't worry, it's compatible with both Mac and Windows computers.

To get to this directory on OSX: Use the Finder’s Go to Folder menu Go to ~/Library Navigate from there to Application Support/Adobe/Acrobat/11.0 (or whatever version you’re using) and create a folder named JavaScripts. Name may be case-sensitive, and don’t forget the trailing s. Copy the fix_forms.js script into the JavaScripts directory. Lastly we need to enable menu items JavaScript execution privileges in Adobe Reader (in the Adobe Reader -> Preferences menu) Enable Menu Items JavaScript Execution Privileges Restart Adobe Reader and you’ll be ready to fix your form! Fix Field Appearances You’ll find the script in the File -> Fix Field Appearances menu. Just run it and Success! A return to sanity is now possible!

The last step is critical. Never EVER use Preview to edit a form again. We are having this problem at our office. The forms are created in Acrobat 11 Pro (Windows 7), but the forms are being used and filled out by foremen at construction sites using iPads. I’ve tried the script, and it works with fixing some of the forms, but not all. But exporting the data and reimporting does fix the ones that don’t respond to the script.