Adobe editable PDF appear blank in Publisher

[papanorts]

I often use Publisher to make changes to existing pdf documents, from simply removing pages to amalgamating documents to editing the content.  One issue that I am seeing now, and it was a problem in PP too, is that if I complete an editable pdf document in Adobe Acrobat Reader DC (free version) such as a questionnaire and save it as pdf,  when I open it in Publisher I cannot see the text I have put in the document.  The text is obviously apparent if I open it in Adobe again so must be saved with the document, but is invisible in Publisher.  I have attached an example. Is there something I can do to help it appear or can Affinity/Serif modify Publisher to reveal the text?  The Adobe document is often a quite small file size too.  Any ideas?

Example.pdf

[Rick G]

Your PDF opened up in Publisher for me

[MikeW]

Rick, papanorts means the form field data.

56 minutes ago, papanorts said:

I often use Publisher to make changes to existing pdf documents, from simply removing pages to amalgamating documents to editing the content.  One issue that I am seeing now, and it was a problem in PP too, is that if I complete an editable pdf document in Adobe Acrobat Reader DC (free version) such as a questionnaire and save it as pdf,  when I open it in Publisher I cannot see the text I have put in the document.  The text is obviously apparent if I open it in Adobe again so must be saved with the document, but is invisible in Publisher.  I have attached an example. Is there something I can do to help it appear or can Affinity/Serif modify Publisher to reveal the text?  The Adobe document is often a quite small file size too.  Any ideas?

Example.pdf

The answer is no, at least not at this time. For many applications, the FDF (Form Data Field) contents are not exposed while opening it for editing. I do have one application that will, but the Wingdings characters are represented by the .notdef character (usually/often a rectangle).

In practice, such form field data is typically extracted from submitted forms and used by spreadsheet applications or a database. Using Acrobat, the data can be saved out of the PDF into a CSV file, that CSV file can then be used in a database or Excel or another spreadsheet application. Likely there are other PDF editors that also can do this, but I do not know if Adobe Reader can do so.

Mike

[Ken Hjulstrom]

Hi,

I know that this original post is over two years old, but I ran across it today, as I was experiencing the same problem.  I can confirm that with Publisher 1.9.3, "placing" a PDF that contains user-entered form field data works, but leaves the form fields blank.  I was able to work around this limitation by opening the PDF in Acrobat and exporting the entire PDF as a series of TIFF files, which I could then "place" into the Publisher document one page at a time.

Ken