Knowledgebase

Symptoms

You have received a form that is meant to have been completed, but when you open it in PDF-XChange Editor the form fields displayed are empty, or show different values from those that are meant to be there.

Cause

The most likely cause of this issue is that the document is a static XFA form. These forms are a special type of form that contain two sets of fields – one set of regular form fields, and a second set of form fields that consist of the separate XFA form fields. The XFA form fields take precedence over the regular form fields, which means that in cases where regular PDF form fields have different values from the XFA form fields, the values of the XFA forms will be displayed. This precedence of XFA form fields over regular form fields is followed by most major PDF applications. However, our discontinued product PDF-XChange Viewer, the Free Adobe Acrobat Reader, Edge, Chrome, and other browsers that can display PDFs, ignore the XFA form field information and instead display and use the regular form field information.

Resolution

We are aware of the issue and we are working on a solution. The solution will probably include a notification that informs users when XFA forms are opened, and then offers some options regarding how to handle the two sets of information present in these files in cases where they do not match. Until we have provided that fix, we advise that you use only PDF-XChange Editor to view/edit XFA forms, as doing so will ensure that you do not encounter the issues detailed above.