How Does Adobe Fill And Sign Work
Leana Eckes
I've been having the same problems for weeks. I uninstalled Adobe DC and Creative Cloud, ran the creative cloud cleanup app, and tried reinstalling it all on my Mac but can't even get it to re-install. The signature portion of the "Fill and Sign" option doesn't work on my PC either (recently re-installed it there). Adobe chat help seems to think it's my computer, but it's happening across all computers and on other people's accounts.
I too am having problems with Fill & Sign, when I download a form and open in Acrobat Pro DC I hit the fill & sign button only to be taken to the My Profile page with Send Options at the end. I am trying to run complete work and this is impossible. PLEASE help.
This is so weird.... last night before I went to bed, I let my mac automatically upgrade to 10.4.4. Then, this morning, first thing (like I do every morning) I opened up my daily task list... it's just a simple PDF that I update every morning to plan my day with. When I tried to edit it, nothing... if I double clicked anywhere, it would take me to Adobe Exchange.
I clicked on "Prepare Form" and all the fields were missing. WFT??? So, I went into Time Machine and went back to several old versions and the same thing.... the form was not fillable and there were no fields. Then, I tried to open another file (a contract that I've been using for years and years... same thing!)
I found a solution that worked for me. I too had a PDF for which Fill & Sign didn't work. So I printed that PDF to PDF, creating a *new* PDF that was truly "flat." When I used Fill & Sign on that new PDF, I was able to enter text and checkmarks, etc. in all fields. Hope this helps!
That's what happened to me and your workaround made the trick. I think the problem is with MS Office applications' "Print to PDF" feature. When you "share as PDF" and then use Adobe's Sign & Fill, the problem disappears.
Could you please help us in understanding the problem with following information-
1. "I used Fill & Sign in Acrobat Reader DC to complete a form that was not fillable in the usual way.", What do you mean by the 'usual way' you find failing to fill the form?
2. What kind of text you added to the form, was it a regular text or the form field text where separate box is made for each character (where each characters are filled in separate box).
3. Which Operating System you are using?
4. Is it a file specific issue or you are seeing the problem on every file.
Could you please share the file on which you are seeing the issue and the snapshot of the final state which you are seeing after two days.
I'm unable to share the file that has the issue since it contains confidential information. The original pdf file was 270 KB. I entered a lot of text and kept saving as I worked (using save, not save as. The save icon does "save as" the first time you click it but then "save" thereafter). By the time I was done the file was 1,828 KB. Perhaps I didn't look at it right away so the two days may be irrelevant. The file now will not show any of the text I entered, although the X's added by "add an X" do show up. I've opened the file with several different PDF viewers, as well as Acrobat Reader DC.
Thanks for providing information.
It would be a great help if you could reproduce the problem and share the file.
I have one more query,
Did you use sign tool as well for placing signature or initials, during form filling?
I am working on filling in about 20 forms (an income tax backlog!). I have been using "save as" every 5 minutes or so and using a new file name each time. The issue has occurred once again: all my text disappeared, though the "add an X" X's remained. I was able to go back to the previous saved file and continue from there so only lost 5 minutes of work. I am reluctant to share the file because it contains sensitive information but once I have completed all the forms I will try to reproduce the error with dummy information. It seems that too much resizing and moving entered text may trigger the problem.
I have had this problem many times so I ended up using the commenting tool instead. Now I am having the same problem with it as well. Maybe the two issues are related? I also show data changes (I mostly use it for filling in schoolwork or any art contracts I need to do) that suggest changes we made in three different spots now: Files, Adobe Acrobat, and Google Drive (where it was uploaded from). Anyone else noticed any odd parallels?
Could you please provide more information about the problem.
1. Which OS version you are using?
2. Did you place a signature on the form before saving?
3. Did you perform a save As or a normal save?
4. Are you seeing the problem with every file or a specific file?
It would also be great if you can share the file on which you are seeing the problem.
I had a similar problem. I used the Fill and Sign feature to add content directly to a PDF file that was not set up as a form. I saved the file and made a copy. I then did a Save As of the original and selected the Reduce File Size check box. (The 6 page document was 26MB!) The saved file lost all the filled data and was reduced in size to 162KB.
I thought I was being smart by making a copy first. The copy is still 26MB but the filled data is all gone. Any idea how I might get it to show up? Considering the size of the file, I suspect it's still there somewhere.
Has there been a solution for this?! I have a project due at midnight for graduate school and all of my data filled in from a 28 page behavioral assessment has disappeared!!! This is my nightmare!!! I never would have used this tool had I known!
Bump. I assume there's no resolution around this, but I just got bitten by it - spent several hours completing a tax form with Fill & Sign, only to have all of my work disappear after I save and close the file. ChKumar or other Adobe staffers, PLEASE help us recover our data that is clearly still embedded in these PDFs. I'm walking a thin line and can't afford to burn an entire work day tediously producing absolutely nothing.
Edit: Like stephm92884755, I desperately need this to get resolved, I had hoped to have these forms done in the next two days and truly have to have them completed by Monday at the latest. Please address the issue, it seems to clearly be a major application bug.
Edit 2: It just dawned on me that since the PDF is clearly larger than it should be, perhaps I'd be able to see evidence of the text input if I opened it with a text editor. Confirmed - I cracked it open with BBEdit and searched for a couple of text strings that I knew should be there, and they are. So the data is present, Acrobat just isn't seeing it. Help!
My graduate school assignment was late and to no fault but this bug. I'm lucky that it was accepted with a small penalty or I would have been out $4k to retake the class. I wasted so much precious time! There should be a warning when you go to edit the document that the fill and sign can only be used for printing.
Thanks Steph. Yeah, the situation is very aggravating. It's one thing to tell me that for whatever reason, they can't help me/us out, but another to ignore my request altogether. I've long since learned not to get my hopes up that Adobe will do the right thing, but that doesn't help me deal with this B.S. situation any better, I'm still apparently going to have to fish my way through the PDF code in order to retrieve all of the data I put in, piece by piece.
I have the exact same problem. Spent significant time filling out a form using the "Fill and Sign" feature. Only to open it the next day with all the text fields missing. The check marks and lines all still show up and the file size is significantly bigger, so I know I did actually save the form. Oddly some other forms I filled out at the same time seemed to be fine.
Hey non-helpful Adobe staff, I just did your job for you. After initially trying to search through the morass of PDF code to tease out my data (extremely tedious, probably not worth the trouble), I decided to try one last thing: copy everything above and below where the textual data appeared, from an older "good" PDF (that I had copied a week ago before closing the document) to the "bad" PDF that was complete but appeared empty. It worked, my data has returned. Eureka! (and grumble - thanks for nothing)
6. Open both this original PDF that you've been using above and your "bad" PDF that contains your hidden data with the text editor that you downloaded. You should see a big jumble of unintelligible code in both.
8. Keep searching for 'Tj' and watching just to the left of the selected search results. What you should eventually find is your nonsensical phrase appearing in parentheses ("rubberducky") right before the Tj.
11. Things get trickier here. We now need to find the last 'Tj' in both documents that has legitimate content (the nonsense phrase) next to it. The easiest way to do this is to search backwards from the end of the document, so start by scrolling all the way to the bottom. Run a search for 'Tj' again, making sure that your text editor is set to do a "wrap around" search, which should have it jump back to the beginning of the document. With any luck, you can then search "backwards" (i.e., jumping back to the end of the document and going up from there) by holding the Shift key and selecting your Search/Find command. If that works, great, keep watching to the left until you see some of your text in parentheses. If it doesn't work, then you're going to have to find another way to locate the last 'Tj' with legitimate text beside it.
12. We need to do the inverse of 7-9 above. Click just to the right of the ending parentheses, then scroll to the end of the document and Shift-click to the right of the last character in the document. Copy from the original PDF, make the same selection in the "bad" PDF, then Paste. To recap, we have just copied all of the "PDF junk" from before and after the added Fill and Sign content in the original PDF and replaced that PDF junk in the "bad" PDF.
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