InDesign 14.0.2 and Acrobat Continuous 2019.10.20099

This issue is about the behavior and appearance of interactive check boxes in documents that have been exported to Interactive PDFs.

There is a difference in the way that check boxes created in InDesign behave and appear versus those created in Acrobat Pro. The Acrobat Pro Forms preferences are involved in this difference.

When, in Acrobat Pro Forms Preferences, under Highlight Color, the “Show border hover color for fields” option is selected, check boxes created in InDesign behave and appear in the following manner.

When a check box is made active, it first appears the same as the check box that was created in InDesign. When you tab to or select another check box, or when you save the selection in the PDF, the appearance of the check box reverts to a default generic check mark.

When, in Acrobat Pro Forms Preferences, under Highlight Color, the “Show border hover color for fields” option is not selected, check boxes created in InDesign behave and appear in the following manner.

When a check box is made active, it first appears the same as the check box that was created in InDesign and remains as such.

This degrades the purpose of using the highlighted fields, which is to call attention to fields that need to be filled.

When the check boxes are created in Acrobat, it makes no difference in appearance or behavior if the “Show border hover color for fields” is selected or not. They always appear as the checkbox style you have chosen to use. They do not revert to a generic check mark.

This is the way that custom check boxes created in InDesign should behave. Thus, they would allow the use of a highlighted field without the appearance of the “selected” custom graphic changing to an unwanted generic graphic.

Please refer to the InDesign Forums message at this link for examples:

https://forums.adobe.com/message/11063952#11063952