Hello,

The following issue appears to be Mac specific. This is not an issue on Windows machines, as all of my testing on multiple machines suggest it's only on Mac's.

The short story:

On Mac's only, changing a text field format in Acrobat Pro DC (ex - changing to a date field) causes the field highlighting to no longer work on those fields that have been adjusted, and are fields that are shown/hidden based on checking/unchecking a check box.

The long story:

I recently have been trying to troubleshoot a relatively minor issue that I can replicate when creating form fields directly in Acrobat Pro DC or after exporting form fields to an interactive PDF from InDesign. I think I'm close to understanding when this issue is happening (finally), after a lot of trial and error. 

Here is the situation:

I create form layouts with invisible text fields in Indesign that are on top of coloured backgrounds. The reason I do this is because I don't know of any way to adjust the text padding inside a text field and I don't want the text butting up to the left edge of the field. This is my workaround... if there is a way to add padding to text in a field please let me know!

After exporting the InDesign form as an interactive PDF and opening it in Acrobat Pro DC, I turn on the field highlight color option in Preferences (Preferences > Forms > Highlight Color: Show border highlight color for fields). I do this typically when I test forms out and then turn it off again once I know things are working, but know that some clients filling the forms out always have this option turned on.

As a next step in Acrobat Pro DC, I select any text fields that require a different field property. Example - a date field, telephone number field, etc. I adjust any of these fields in Acrobat Pro DC by double clicking on the field to bring up the field text properties, and then choosing the desired category from the Format tab.

All is fine so far.

These specific fields in question that have been adjusted turn on/off based on selecting/deselecting a check box. If I turn the check box off, and then back on, the fields that have been adjusted do not highlight with all of the other fields (on a Mac). They will highlight after moving the mouse either over any other active field. They just no longer highlight instantly after channging from text field to another format (ex - Date field, Phone Number field, number field, etc.).

I have discovered that if I put a background color on the fields, it will solve this. The issue is, I don't want to do this because I have created them as invisible fields that are on top of designed rectangled behind them to give the field the visual appearance I am trying to achieve.

Attached are the examples, showing what is happening. You must view these on a Mac in order to see the issue. This happens if I create the fields in InDesign, or directly in Acrobat Pro DC.

Current InDesign: 17.0.1
Current Acrobat Pro DC: 21.11.20039

Please view the attached PDF's in this order, and note the comments added to each one.

1.) FormTestDefaultExport.pdf

2.) FormTestFieldFormatsAdjustedInAcrobatProDC.pdf

3.) FormTestAdjustedFieldsHaveBackgroundColors_FormatsAdjustedInAcrobatProDC.pdf