Enable Typewriter Tool for Acrobat Reader

| 10 Comments

For some reason, educational institutions don’t like to take the time to run Form Field recognition before publishing PDF forms. Adobe Reader users will not be able to digitally fill out the form unless the form has had the fields added in Acrobat. Using the Form Field Recognition tool is ridiculously easy (Forms > Form Field Recognition).

If you don’t take the time to run FFR, at least activate the Typewriter tool for your Acrobat Reader users (Full-blown Acrobat users can activate the Typewriter tool anytime). The Typewriter tool allows text to be typed anywhere on a document.

To activate the Typewriter Tool for Acrobat Reader users:

1. Open Adobe Acrobat 8
2. Click Tools > Typewriter > Enable Typewriter Tool in Adobe Reader

Useless bit of information – The longest word that can be typed using only the top row of alphanumeric keys is “typewriter.” (I know your testing it out…now get back to work!)

10 Comments

Maybe I'll take a look for that. Hate when you can't type in a form. Then have to figure out others ways to do it - like opening it up in AI or PS.

Not true. With the top row you can write:

powertower
towerpower (haha!)

All with only the first row:

pete i require tower power you trippy wet peer i rip your tit out.

I downloaded a PDF form frequently used by genealogist to record family information.

It is titled Family Record Form.pdf.

I cannot tell if it is interactive, because I have not been able to fill out any fields on my computer using Adobe Reader 8.012.

The document appears with all the fields. When I move my cursor to the field for input,
The cursor is an I beam. I start typing and nothing happens, the cursor remains in place and does not move.

I can move the cursor to another field but again nothing happens when I begin to type.

Is my entire form a paper only completion?

Typewriter Input – I cannot check off typewriter input until I “Enable Document Rights”.

I cannot find the instruction for enableing document rights.

I tried 3 times to convert it to a pdf form on Acrobat, but it failed each time. Probably because it was already a pdf form.

My computer is a Gateway, Pentium R 4 CPU,1.5 GHZ, 1.0 GB of RAM. Total virtual memory 1.96 GB. Total physical memory 463.18 MB. OS Windows XP.

The instruction on this blog does not mention how to enable document rights.

I have Vista installed. Adobe 8 came with it. I know it sounds crazy, but my typewriter tool is missing...I cannot enable it on documents or use it! I have looked online for help and cannot find it. Please help!

please! help me to be albe to type on my documet. I have the button for the typwriter theres a star sigh* next to it. what can i do to get it working.

A month ago my typewriter worked on my .pdf's and now they don't. I have two computers and the newer one I downloaded the latest Adobe Reader version - it doesn't work - and the old computer version 7 doesn't work either! Maybe it is the source document from the educational organization? i tired a pdf from another source and same problem as described by the other posts here.

Yes, please! Will someone answer the above questions. I've had the exact same problem and haven't solved it in a year's time. HELP!! Why can I not fill in the forms?!

I have our company letterhead
emailed to me as pdf. I need
to use it to type quotations that we email to customers
How do I go about that as I'm stuck.
I had acrobat adobe 8 and I had to update to version 9
thinking that it will help

http://www.acrobatusers.com/articles/2006/09/enabling_reader/index.php

Instructions to enable user rights (to use typewriter in Adobe).

I have the same question as Nature and Mariel. I had an older version 7 now i have 9 and my typewriter doesn't work now. HELP

Leave a comment

About this Entry

This page contains a single entry by Scott Trudeau published on May 5, 2008 2:08 PM.

Extracting Non-Sequential Pages from PDF’s was the previous entry in this blog.

Create an Acrobat Print Button is the next entry in this blog.

Find recent content on the main index or look in the archives to find all content.