Problems pasting copied text into pdf form field

Paul Seaford

unread,

Jul 30, 2003, 2:27:13 PM7/30/03

to

I am running Acrobat 5.0 and trying to complete a long IRS fill-in form that contains form fields. Some of these fields require input of extensive amounts of text, running several paragraphs. I have prepared draft responses in MS Word and would like to be able to copy them and paste them into the form fields in the IRS form, but it won't let me paste (it ignores control-V and greys out paste in the dropdown menu).

Am i doing something wrong, or is this not possible? Is there any work-around?

Suzanne Cole

unread,

Jul 30, 2003, 2:48:34 PM7/30/03

to

Pasting from Word to PDF text fields shouldn't be a problem. Are you sure the forms are fillable? (Many IRS forms require you to print out the form and fill it by hand.) Can you type text into the fields?

Paul Seaford

unread,

Jul 30, 2003, 4:06:33 PM7/30/03

to

Yes, I am to type text into the fields, and in fact have retyped a portion of form by hand, without copying and pasting. But I have more to do and I would like to just paste if possible.

Suzanne Cole

unread,

Jul 30, 2003, 4:49:01 PM7/30/03

to

Odd.
I apologize in advance for asking this -- but are you very sure the text you copied from Word actually was copied...?

Do you have both documents open on the same drive?

Paul Seaford

unread,

Jul 30, 2003, 5:27:30 PM7/30/03

to

Quite sure the text I copied was copied to the clipboard. Still no paste. I can then paste clipboard to other locations, including here.

Yes, both are opened on the same drive, if by that you mean that both the word doc and pdf form reside on the same drive of the network. Does that matter?

heathermartin

unread,

Jul 30, 2003, 5:42:10 PM7/30/03

to

Can you give us a link to the form or a similar form?
Heather

Paul Seaford

unread,

Jul 30, 2003, 5:57:13 PM7/30/03

to

Paul Seaford

unread,

Jul 30, 2003, 5:59:44 PM7/30/03

to

Here's the form that I am having problems with. Haven't tried any others. Form fields start on or about page 10 of this doc.

<http://www.irs.gov/pub/irs-fill/k1023.pdf>

William A. Davis

unread,

Jul 31, 2003, 3:34:37 AM7/31/03

to

Paul,

I just opened the form in Acrobat 5 and was able to cut and paste from both Acrobat and WORD. It may be a font or formating related issue for you, but it worked fine for me. You might want to see if the text you are copying copies to Notepad ok. If not, it is something about your system most likely.

I did single line copies and even went to tha page with a big field and copied 2 paragraphs of a random document on my system. All worked fine.

Bill

Suzanne Cole

unread,

Jul 31, 2003, 8:34:43 AM7/31/03

to

I have no problems pasting from Word into the form, in either Reader or Acrobat 5.0.5. Paul, you mentioned you're running 5.0. If that's actually true, you might want to see if you can get the update to 5.0.5, which fixed several bugs.

The pasted text is displayed in blue Helvetica Bold, but that font comes from my system -- the font is not embedded in the document. According to Document Properties, the fonts used at document creation are all custom-encoded. I wonder if this might be a source of the problem.

Do you have Adobe Type Manager? Maybe installing ATM Lite might help... but that's frankly a guess. Someone with better understanding of how ATM works with Acrobat would be in a better position to voice an opinion on that.

(To find the actual version you're running, go to the Help menu and click About Adobe Acrobat, but ignore the large text on the splash screen and look for the version in smaller type along the top.)

heathermartin

unread,

Jul 31, 2003, 9:37:04 AM7/31/03

to

I was also able to copy/paste using Reader and Acrobat 5.5. One more thing to try: every so often, I run into a situation where CTRL/C and CTRL/V don't work, but using the drop down menus for Copy and Paste in each program do...
Heather