FillablePDF: After downloading the fillable PDF, it is reported as corrupted or of not support format

  • tigovernance
    Asked on April 21, 2015 at 10:03 AM

    Dear JotForm Support,

    I seem to have a similar problem. When I create the fillable pdf of my form, I can download and save it to my computer, but as soon as I try opening it I get an error message that says that Adobe Reader could not open the form as it is not a supported file or was maybe damaged. My assumption is that I need more than the Adobe Reader to work with the pdf creator that jotform offers, right?

    Thanks for your help.

  • Ben
    Replied on April 21, 2015 at 10:06 AM

    Can you please give us the link to the jotform that is causing this issue for you? Usually this is caused by a very long form or something else on the jotform, so seeing it would help us understand why it happens.

  • tigovernance
    Replied on April 21, 2015 at 10:08 AM

    The URL is http://www.jotform.com/?formID=51101821313336

    And it is indeed a long form.

  • Ben
    Replied on April 21, 2015 at 11:29 AM

    I took a look at your jotform: http://www.jotformeu.com/form/51101821313336 and I see that it is indeed a very long form, which is certainly the reason why the fillable PDF was not exported properly.

    Unfortunately since Fillable PDFs are a new feature that we offer, I can not tell you if this will be worked on any time soon (or even at all) so I would like to point you to this guide: Fillable PDF - Everything you need to know about JotForm fillable PDF creator

    It gives you a general overview of what you can expect and you will see at the end that the recommended option for long forms would be to split them up into several forms instead and print them out like that - or use several fillable PDFs.

    I would however always suggest using web forms instead since they will be available to everyone with internet connection, while fillable PDFs require special software to be used instead.

  • opxladmin
    Replied on September 10, 2015 at 12:31 PM

    Ben, this is a great approach. Ideally, I'd like a guide that would let me code a field on my PDF form so it writes to the JotForm table, actually what I'd like is a jotform plugin in Adobe Acrobat that when I want a field to push to JotForm, it brings up a mapping table and lets me choose what field to map it to.

    And then i could got to JotForm and click Integration and get the code for the submit button.

    And conversely, I'd like to use a jotform to QUERY the database using Standard SQL language.

    Any ideas?

     

    Doug Marlowe

     

     

  • Ben
    Replied on September 10, 2015 at 1:41 PM

    Since your post Doug is not directly related to the subject of this thread, I have moved your post to a new thread here: http://www.jotform.com/answers/659147 and we will be answering it shortly.