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Acrobat Pro: Creating a tip/instruction message when a user clicks on a text field

New to using Acrobat Pro for creating PDF forms. I am working on a page that has several text fields positioned and formatted correctly for a program so the user can click on any of the fields and type in their information.

That works fine, but I would like to have it so (for example), when a user clicks the text field to edit/type in it, a message would appear saying "Make sure the title you include also has the opus number". This would just be a tip and something that would disappear as soon as the user is done with that text field.

Is there a straightforward way to do this that doesn't require several action items (like creating a new text field?)

Thank you so much!

Solution

  • A somewhat kludgy, but simple way to accomplish would be to create another text field, making the help text to the default value, have the field read-only, and hidden per default.

    Then you would add to the code in the onFocus event:

    this.getField("help.myField").display = display.noPrint ;

    and to the code in the onBlur event:

    this.getField("help.myField").display = display.hidden ;

    (assuming that the field with the help text for the field myField is named help.myField).

    Instead of having an individual help text field for every data entry field, you could also have a general message field on the page. In this case, you would add the following to the onFocus event:

    this.getField("myHelpText").value = "This is the explanation for myField" ;

    and to the onBlur event:

    this.getField("myHelpText").value = "" ;

    And that should do it.

    There is also the mousetip text, which appears when the mouse hovers over the field. You either add it in the field properties, or using JavaScript and the userName field object property.