Form Field fonts defaulting to wrong font after FormMaker upgrade.

ccorrales

I've recently had an issue with FormMaker and fonts when creating an interactive PDF. Form fields in the PDF default to Verdana when InDesign and FormMaker are set to Helvetica Regular in both the Buttons and Forms panel and FormMaker Appearance tab.

I have templates with premade form fields. These fields worked correctly with the previous version of FormMaker 4.0 Pro. However I upgraded when that version had server connection issues. This issue only affects fields and files created with the previous FormMaker version, previous files that worked correctly with version 4.0 default to Verdana when outputting the PDF using 4.0.10. When I create a new field from scratch it correctly uses Helvetica Regular after running the FormMaker extension in Acrobat.

I do have a workaround. I set FormMaker to Helvetica (core PDF font), which causes the Buttons and Forms panel to show Arial Regular. The fields will now correctly show Helvetica in the interactive form. I do not need to set the Buttons and Forms font, just the FormMaker font. This does require each form field to be selected and is time consuming. I can also bulk select the fields in Acrobat and change the the font to Helvetica regular.

Current software
FormMaker: 4.0.10 Pro
Indesign: 18.1
Acrobat: 2024.002.20964

Please let me know if you have ant questions.

Thanks

Ariel

Hi,
Unfortunately, FormMaker 4.0.10 is not fully backwards-compatible with previous versions, because a lot of changes and improvements were made. So you should keep your eye open for any oddities. (And if you find any, use the "Purge selected fields" button under the Document tab.)
Regarding the font... How have you created the text fields in InDesign? If you've used text frames (rather than rectangles) and paragraph styles, I think that changing the font in the paragraph style to something else, running FormMaker export, and then changing it back to Helvetica in the paragraph style properties should work to reset all the fields to Helvetica.
If you have not used paragraph styles, it should still be possible to do a find/change for all text, change it to some other font, export the PDF from FormMaker, and then find/change all text back to Helvetica.
I think either of those options should work.
However, if you've used rectangles (I mean, graphic rectangles rather than real text frames) in InDesign, these options are not applicable.
Let me know how it goes.