Automatic Fillable Form Field Detection

[benefit commerce group]

Hey all,

We've bumped into a pain point during our Acrobat to XChange migration.

A few users are sorely missing Acrobat's ability to detect possible Form Fields and create them automatically. Am I missing this feature somewhere or does it not exist? If not, is there another tool we need or is it on the roadmap at all?

Thank you!

[claude vidal]

This thread viewtopic.php?f=62&t=28874&hilit=automatic+form+field discusses this.

[Dimitar - Tracker Supp]

Hello claude,

Thank you for bringing this information.



Hello benefit commerce group,

If you need further assistance please ask.

Regards.

[benefit commerce group]

Thanks for the thread link. It's been about a year now - any update on a timeline for this feature?

Not sure if you guys would prefer I ask here or revive the old thread.

[Paul - Tracker Supp]

Hi

There is a ticket for this in the system however it's priority is not high and it has not yet been actioned.

I have raised the priority a little, this is not however a promise to deliver, but a commitment to looking into it.

hth

[Timur Born]

PowerPDF's solution really looks neat. I rarely need form fields, but if I did then this would be an incentive to get their product. Even more so because it might make me use form fields more often, because it's not such a manual and tedious process anymore. PP was also quite good as converting PDF to Word (if I remember correctly) when I tested several solutions. Currently both of these areas are weaknesses of Editor, with OCR being another contender, at least in comparison.

So any improvements to Editor that make placing forms fields easier surely is very welcome.

[TrackerSupp-Daniel]

Thanks for the input Timur,
I do agree that those methods of creating form fields look very nice and quite easy to use, and as Paul mentioned we have a ticket in place for the matter. We are actively working on our conversions to Office formats, so over time they should improve.

Funny you should mention OCR though, As we have just released a new OCR function, in the same menu directly beside the current OCR button is a new one called Enhance Scanned PDF. This function has been added as of build 325 and in most cases works significantly better than our current OCR function does.

Have a great day!

[cindyb]

My boss just got a new computer, and I had already migrated the rest of my office to PDF XChange with the Tools bundle. I had read that forms creation was available, and mistakenly assumed that this included a field-detection component. She purchased either Plus or Pro this week, and she's just getting used to it, but is really unhappy that it doesn't automatically detect fields (it's something she used multiple times a week in Adobe Acro X). Does anyone know of a free/low cost solution? What do you all do as a workaround for this? I see that there isn't any specific answer as to when this will be an available feature in this software.

[Tracker Supp-Stefan]

Hello Cindy,

Apologies but I still do not have an estimate as of when we might offer this automatic recognition feature, and I am also unable to recommend any alternatives!

Regards,
Stefan

[Timur Born]

Does anyone know of a free/low cost solution? What do you all do as a workaround for this? I see that there isn't any specific answer as to when this will be an available feature in this software.

I would say that PowerPDF is not too expensive if you only need a single standard license.

[Tracker Supp-Stefan]

Appreciate the input Timur,

Cheers,
Stefan

[claude vidal]

Not cool to mention the competition here, but if you quickly need a low cost tool to automatically recognize potential form fields, you won't find anything less expensive than PDFill.

The reason I venture mentioning this is that PDFXchange is way more evolved: no risk of switching. I know, I still have a licence for PDFill acquired before I found PDFXchange.

[TrackerSupp-Daniel]

Thanks again for the input everyone,
As we mentioned above, there is already a feature request in place for the matter, and the more users we hear want it, the more likely we are to implement it sooner.

[petepuma01]

Let me add my voice for this feature-- the automatic creation/addition of form fields give Adobe a huge advantage. I hope others will add their vote for this feature so it gets a higher priority.

[Tracker Supp-Stefan]

Thanks for this petepuma01,

I will request that we raise the priority of the ticket!
For reference - the ticket number is #4257

Regards,
Stefan

[MPFPR]

Dear Tracker-Support-Team,

Thank You for the support and great tool.
Our company is interesed in the development and release of this feature as well. Just to help raising the prority. A reply is not required.

Kind regards

[TrackerSupp-Daniel]

Your interest is duly noted!

[End User]

I'm not sure if this is the most recent topic on this subject, so if there is a more recent topic, please provide a link.

Please add me to the list of users requesting this feature.

I thought maybe I just wasn't clever enough to find the feature in PDF-XChange Editor to automatically detect and add form fields, but when I wasn't able to find any helpful information in the help file, I started to think maybe it just wasn't an available feature.

Then I had an epiphany this morning "I bet the feature I'm looking for is part of that separate PDF-Tools bundle that I never learned to use and still can't figure out why it needs to be a separate program...". Unfortunately, while there seem to be four useful features related to form field within that PDF-Tools bundle, none of them were what I was looking for

[Tracker Supp-Stefan]

Hello End User,

Thanks for adding your vote for the feature!
It is indeed something we will be looking at for the future, but you are also correct that it is not yet available.

Regards,
Stefan

[radmin]

This is a major issue for our Estimators. I had one with local admin permissions flip out and reinstall Acrobat DC 2015. We saw it on our software audit the end of last week, now it's a fight because she is correct, it's an important feature that SHOULD be part of PDF Xchange Pro + Advanced Tools.

Hello End User,

Thanks for adding your vote for the feature!
It is indeed something we will be looking at for the future, but you are also correct that it is not yet available.

Regards,
Stefan

[radmin]

This is a followup about the form fill in, not sure if my previous post went through.

This missing field detection feature is a significant problem for us. Please raise the priority on this.

[TrackerSupp-Daniel]

Hi, radmin

We understand that this is a critical feature for many users, but it is also a feature which will be highly complex, and will require a significant development investment which our small team of specialists simply does not have the resources to allocate to at the moment. We specifically offer our software to download free for evaluation so that our potential clients can test the available functions and ensure that everything they need is present before making a purchase.

This item already has among the highest priority level possible due to the sheer user demand, but there are still other items which take precedence. This will require multiple developers attention and the specific developers who will need to develop this are the ones focusing on our current accessibility overhaul, will very soon be a legal requirement to have in our software in some locations.

This will be coming in the future, do not worry about that, but it will only be available when it is ready.

Kind regards,

[ds1]

It's been over a year since the last update on this issue. Is there currently any further info available for when development might begin on this?

[TrackerSupp-Daniel]

Hello, ds1

At the moment no, there is no news on the development of this feature or its pending implementation. Due to the complexity, this request can be considered a "long term" item, and it unfortunately will still be many months (or possibly even a few years) from now before we can offer it.

Kind regards,

[RIN]

Dear support Team,
any news on this feature?
To be on the safe side: does this thread talk about fields created in word or detect "possible fields" (like empty space in a table)?
Automatically created fields out of fields defined in word would already help me for now.
Thx

[Paul - Tracker Supp]

HI RIN,
I just discussed this with the development team leader. The work in progress is to convert non-form documents forms. It will use a library that does something similar to OCR in that it will "look" at a page and do what it can to intelligently create for fields where appropriate.

It is not taking Word forms and converting them to PDF. I asked if that was a possible intermediate thing to deliver and was told that we won't be doing Word to PDF form conversion because the internal differences in how forms work in Word and PDFs are prohibitive.

The good news is that there is progress on the ticket, while I will not promise a delivery date it does look good for being later this year.

I hope that helps

[Timur Born]

What is the current status on this? I cannot find an example PDF at the moment to test, so I wonder if it has been implemented yet?

[TrackerSupp-Daniel]

Hello, Timur Born

It has arrived, Tadaa!

Kind regards,

[Timur Born]

Great stuff, thanks for that!

[Tracker Supp-Stefan]