[ Update : Looks like Joel’s site has changed and the previous link is no longer working. You can find the solution with some background information on Joel Geraci’s old Adobe blog. The fields that need a new appearance stream are easy to fix – all we need to do is force a redraw: There is a solution in JavaScript, but it requires to identify the problem first, and then run the script to refresh the form fields. Here is a 5 minute video that shows the damage Preview can do to a PDF form: The PDF specification actually has a solution for an application that cannot update the appearance stream (section 12.7.2 Interactive Form Dictionary, the NeedAppearances entry in the forms dictionary). It’s a known problem that Preview gives the user the impression that a PDF form can be filled out and saved, but when such a form is then opened in a PDF viewer that is conforming to the PDF specification, the form fields are blank… The data is there, just not visible to the user because Preview “forgot” to tell the viewer that it did actually save the data, but then did not update the “appearance stream”, and it also “forgot” to set the flag that would instruct the viewer application to recreate that appearance stream. We are talking about the Mac OS Preview application and PDF forms.

I would say that this behavior is unacceptable. How do you feel about an application saving changes to your files without you knowing? How about if that application is not just saving harmless changes, but in the process of doing so also rewrites the file and removes important information and corrupts the document?

Mac preview not opening pdf