Adobe Acrobat DC Form Selectors Using Get Text or Type Into

Help
,
1

Ok,

So I’ve now been trying to solve this problem for months and have been through all the Forums on how to try and get this to work. Still have yet to get a definitive answer on the mechanics of why this can’t or wont work.

Here’s the rundown of what I’m trying to do. I have a tax form which I downloaded from the IRS. Form 3115. It works great in its original format. It has selectors and I’m able to use UiPath’s activities on it just fine. It’s when I go to modify it by printing to pdf and then modifying it by preparing it with my own form fields that are a must. When I go to select a selector, it selects the whole pdf. My form fields work just fine if I’m just using Adobe, it’s when I go to use a Type Into activity that it selects the whole thing.

Examples:
Original File From IRS. Selectors working just fine

AdobeSS1
AdobeSS11591×923 28.4 KB

Updated File With New Forms. Selector selects the whole page
AdobeSS2
AdobeSS21591×923 23.8 KB

Now I know some of you are going to suggest using Tab to work through the document but I just can’t use it in my case. Also using an OCR with anchor base isn’t going to work either. I could Python but there is a scenario where this just will not work.

I’m going to pull out the big guns for this one and I apologize in advance for doing so, but this has been an issue all over the forum and I think it’s time we find a reliable answer on how to fix the selectors in a pdf. Shouldn’t be this much of a headache at the point. So I’m going to tag @loginerror, @Lahiru.Fernando, @Palaniyappan and hope I can stay in your all’s good graces.

Thank you so much in advanced

1 Like
2

Hi @BotMonkey

Any chance you could provide both files? From what it looks, because the form fields that you add afterwards are not properly recognized, it might be about how you add them that counts.

Also, please do try the latest activity packages to see if they fix something here (especially the uiautomation one).

3

@loginerror

First, thanks for pulling this one. I’m attaching the files as requested. I’ve just downloaded the new preview, so I’ll look into the new activities. In the meantime, can you discuss how to properly create a pdf that has recognizable selectors that UiPath can pick up please. The way that I’ve been working with these is as follows:

Since it is a certified document and can’t be edited, I have to take the original pdf which is locked for editing, then print to pdf. That allows me to then use the tool “Prepare Form” on the newly printed pdf. I set up all my own custom form fields which then allows me have the final document to be used in the bot. Unfortunately when I go back to use one of the activities, it fails due to the reasons stated above.

I’m guessing that there has to be selectors in the new doc, due to the fact that they’re being used by Adobe when creating the form as shown below.

AdobeSS3
AdobeSS31920×1050 131 KB

Hope this helps a little. Any guidance is always greatly appreciated.

Here are the two files in question. v1 is the updated pdf with custom forms and edits.
f3115.pdf (307.4 KB) f3115v1.pdf (244.1 KB)

Again, Thank you always for your effort on the forums

4

@BotMonkey

have a lok here, the selector is generated by Uiexplorer for your V1 Document:

<wnd app='acrord32.exe' cls='AcrobatSDIWindow' title='f3115v1.pdf - Adobe Acrobat Reader DC' />
<wnd aaname='Dokumentbereich' cls='AVL_AVView' title='AVScrolledPageView' />
<wnd cls='AVL_AVView' title='AVPageView' />
<ctrl idx='7' role='row' />
<ctrl name='1) DCN' role='editable text' />

Maybe some Acrobat Reader Accessbility setting will cause the block of field selection

5

@ppr

I think I might have found a fix. It was the reading order. I had it in read from raw print stream instead of Infer reading order from document in the Reading Order Options. Thanks for your help. Hopefully this can be a fix. I’m going to play around with it and see if it’s stable. I’ll keep this post open just in case.

6

@BotMonkey
I guess you are touching the right things. On the first attempt I had the same, only entire page was selected. After editing the options also a lot questions to reading order was to answer. And with modified settings it was reading

7

just to add, had similar problems with acrobat 2020. using get text to read form field would not work as it didn’t recognize any fields, just the enitre page was marked. Solution was to press TAB twice to activate one of the fields, then uipath regonized the other fields as well. strange.