Weird PDF quirk
in [Mac Applications]
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From: Wes Groleau on 7 Jul 2010 23:08 I pulled PDF forms from the US IRS website and started doing my taxes on my Macbook. This weekend, having finally received some needed information (the lack of which being why I filed an extension), I opened up some of them and tried to finish. Using Preview, I was able to type into some fields that had not previously been touched, but was not able to change fields already entered. Other empty fields would show what I was typing, but it would vanish when I went to another field. I downloaded a fresh copy from IRS, and filled it in with no problem. But I didn't print it at home. Instead, I wanted to print it laser at work. So I dragged the PDFs to a USB drive and put it in the Win box at work. They were all blank! For some unknown reason, I clicked a thing in the Adobe 8 frame that said highlight fields (or something like). All the data entry fields shaded pale blue and the text/numbers that were black in Preview appeared dark blue in Adobe. So, I tried to print it. It printed a blank form. So I went to each form on the Mac in Preview, selected print, then Mail PDF, and sent them all to my work address. THEN Adobe saw them as having text in black that it could print. :-) -- Wes Groleau ------ "The reason most women would rather have beauty than brains is they know that most men can see better than they can think." -- James Dobson
From: isw on 7 Jul 2010 23:55 In article <i13ffb$vsd$1(a)news.eternal-september.org>, Wes Groleau <Groleau+news(a)FreeShell.org> wrote: > I pulled PDF forms from the US IRS website and started doing my taxes on > my Macbook. Two observations on PDF forms from the IRS (from a couple of years ago): 1) Preview couldn't render them properly; I had to use the Adobe viewer app. Preview gave all sorts of garbage characters. 2) Non-Postscript (level II) printers could not properly print the forms (garbage characters again). The only way I could get it to work was with my LaserJet 2100 M that has a Postscript card installed. Isaac
From: Phillip Jones on 8 Jul 2010 00:08 isw wrote: > In article<i13ffb$vsd$1(a)news.eternal-september.org>, > Wes Groleau<Groleau+news(a)FreeShell.org> wrote: > >> I pulled PDF forms from the US IRS website and started doing my taxes on >> my Macbook. > > Two observations on PDF forms from the IRS (from a couple of years ago): > > 1) Preview couldn't render them properly; I had to use the Adobe viewer > app. Preview gave all sorts of garbage characters. > > 2) Non-Postscript (level II) printers could not properly print the forms > (garbage characters again). The only way I could get it to work was with > my LaserJet 2100 M that has a Postscript card installed. > > Isaac Most IRS forms are created in the PC version of Acrobat the most expensive version. They create XML based PDF forms. first to make them so you can use them. You need Acrobat (or perhaps PDFPen. Save as a regular PDF I haven't tried PDFPen to see if it has a Forms Creator. In Acrobat open Forms menu and choose create form > then from current document. add any fields it didn't create. Then once form is created go to advanced menu and go add Reader Rights. save again. BTW save as different name. Then you can fill in the form up to 500 times with reader and print. -- Phillip M. Jones, C.E.T. "If it's Fixed, Don't Break it" http://www.phillipmjones.net mailto:pjones1(a)kimbanet.com
From: BreadWithSpam on 8 Jul 2010 01:46 Wes Groleau <Groleau+news(a)FreeShell.org> writes: > I downloaded a fresh copy from IRS, and filled it in with no problem. > But I didn't print it at home. Instead, I wanted to print it laser > at work. So I dragged the PDFs to a USB drive and put it in the Win > box at work. They were all blank! For some unknown reason, I clicked I've had all sorts of nightmare problems with Preview and PDF forms in the past. Mainly it was under 10.5 and they did make substantial improvements to Preview in 10.6. But I lost hours of work in forms the first time around. After that, I bought PDFPen and, while it was a little slow and quirky (and it sometimes reflowed fields after I'd filled them in and I had to deal with moving some stuff around and reformatting by hand), but unlike my problems with Preview, at least I never lost all my data. Adobe Reader was even worse than Preview. -- Plain Bread alone for e-mail, thanks. The rest gets trashed.
From: Wes Groleau on 8 Jul 2010 07:12
On 07-08-2010 01:46, BreadWithSpam(a)fractious.net wrote: > Adobe Reader was even worse than Preview. The behavior I posted is the only difficulty I ever had with either app and IRS forms. -- Wes Groleau "If it wasn't for that blasted back-hoe, a hundred of us could be working with shovels" "Yeah, and if it weren't for our shovels, a thousand of us could be working with spoons." |