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I have a 24 pages pdf registration document which the user is supposed to print out, manually fill, send by post or scan and send back by email. Once received, different pages are sent to different persons (secretary, accountant, educator, nurse, director, etc.).

I want to transform it into a pdf form with editable fields.

As the pages are shared out upon arrival, the user has to write his name and contact details several times. It would be better if the user could write his name once, and the content of that field would automatically appear in all the other "name" fields.

I found an answer to the opposite problem here : How to create a fillable PDF file with many identical-looking but distinct boxes

In this post, the problem was that the content of the fields was being duplicated. However, when I tried out the code, the content wasn't duplicated.

How do I do this, please?

I tried Ulrike Fischer's solution with the code :

 \documentclass{paper} \usepackage{hyperref} \begin{document} \begin{Form}[action=mailto:[email protected]?subject={The form},method=post] \TextField[name=lastname, width=5cm, height=0.6cm]{Type Last Name} \vskip .1in \TextField[width=5cm, height=0.6cm]{Type First Name} \vskip .1in \TextField[name=lastname, width=5cm, height=0.6cm]{Type Last Name} \vskip .1in \TextField[width=5cm, height=0.6cm]{Type First Name} \vskip .1in \end{Form} \end{document} 

It doesn't function. I open the pdf with Okular, click on "show forms", fill all fields with different values or leave the third field empty, save and reload. The pdf is saved with my input, if the third field was left empty is it still empty.

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    well it should work if you use the same field name. But it is better to set the name of the field explicitly: \TextField[name=lastname]{Type Last Name} . Commented Apr 21 at 10:36
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    @UlrikeFischer maybe an okular issue? I can't get it to work, but I can't test in acrobat right now. Commented Apr 22 at 15:33
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    this is a viewer bug, I think. possibly in poppler: gitlab.freedesktop.org/poppler/poppler/-/issues/234, from okular bug at bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=450098. Commented Apr 22 at 16:07
  • @cfr You are right, I tested with acroread and it functions. Write this as an answer if you wish, and I'll accept it. Commented Apr 23 at 9:33

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This is due to a viewer bug, reported for Okular at https://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=450098, but possibly caused by a bug in poppler, as reported at https://gitlab.freedesktop.org/poppler/poppler/-/issues/234, which probably affects Evince and other poppler-based viewers, too.

There's actually a bounty for a fix for this bug in Okular, but there doesn't seem to be much interest in fixing it, unfortunately.

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  • It's not so much interest that's missing, it's knowledge. Retrieving the source code of Okular and getting it to compile on my machine sounds problem-prone, never mind understanding the code sufficiently to start modifying it... Commented Apr 24 at 7:48
  • @AlainReve I more meant: doesn't seem much interest in in fixing it from people able to fix it. there are definitely a few people interested in it being fixed. hence, I assume, the bounty .... Commented Apr 24 at 15:24

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