If you're interested, I've developed a (paid-for) script for Acrobat that can make sure that all the fields in the file have a unique name. However, since it involves re-creating them (as they can't be renamed directly), any scripts associated with them are lost in the process, including things like Calculation, Validation, Format, etc. But I agree that this is something that should be solved by the creator of the form, as you're probably not the only person who has this issue with it... Did you report it to them?
On Tue, Aug 12, 2025 at 2:16 PM Ulf Dittmer <ulf.ditt...@googlemail.com.invalid> wrote: > Hello- > > I'm encountering PDFs with forms that have non-unique field names. > Sometimes fields with the same names are used for the same information (a > useful scenario, making filling them out programmatically easier). But > sometimes the same names are used for entirely different field purposes. > > Is there a way within the PDFBox API to dis-ambiguate those fields? Or are > there tools that can do this (we do have a budget, so payware would be OK, > within limits)? > > These are government PDFs, so we don't control their creation. But if there > is a way to edit them that addresses this, that would also work for us - > the forms do not change frequently. > > http://ulfdittmer.com/Guide_TH.pdf is an example of such a PDF. OBJ3, > OBJ4, > OBJ10, OBJ18 and OBJ24 are field names that are used twice. > > Any help would be appreciated. > > Ulf >
