Fillable PDF Form - Locking the Fillable Space

[gsrgofass]

I have a form assembled in ‘Writer’ and I export directly to PDF.

Once the form is in PDF format, I want to have the fields fillable for whomever needs to submit a form.
As you can see, the form works except I am having a problem with the ‘Failure Description’, the ‘Hours’ and the ‘Work Performed’ fields. My problem is that if the user enters too many characters, the lines entered at the beginning of the filed are pushed up and disappear.
If I limit the characters, the same effect is possible depending on how many ENTER keystrokes are used.

What I would like to know is, can I create a fillable field that is limited to the physical space of that box and not by how many characters are entered? This way, if there is not sufficient space to write what is necessary, I can either make a ‘Continue’ field on the next page or have the user choose to include the additional information by other means, like an email.
For example, let’s say the fillable field has the capacity to have 10 lines of text. The user can choose to enter text until 10 lines are used and then cannot enter any more information in that field, regardless of how many characters were used within those 10 lines.

Is this doable?
I have attached the Writer file sample.

Credit Request Form - Sample.odt (56.7 KB)

[Hrbrgr]

You can limit the size of the text box by setting the “Text type” and the “Scrollbar” in “Properties: Text Box”.

75895.odt (75,6 KB)

---

EDIT 2022-18-01 18.55-MEZ

Limiting the text field with characters is perfectly fine.
But this has first only conditionally to do with the size of the text field or is variable.

I have looked at your file and uploaded it here again.
I once limited the text field with the light yellow background to 50 characters. And it comes a message if you want to enter more characters. The 50 characters do not fill the text field by far.

What you have to watch out for:
You create a text field and limit the number of characters.
Does the text overflow or is the text field too large?
The text field now only knows the number of characters to limit.
The text field does not know at first: Which font and size you use. And which letters occur how often. Do you write a lot of “i” or more “Ö” or “W” or “m”? Therefore, the limitation with the number of characters alone is not decisive.
It is your responsibility to choose the right font and size according to the text field. After that, try to fill the text field with different standard text to see if it is ready for the possible situations.

72895 Credit Request Form - Sample.odt (55,7 KB)

---

See also:

Text box(es)

Dependence of the height of the fields on the font size

[gsrgofass]

Unfortunately that does not 'Lock" the text window. I may be using the wrong terms here but I don’t have any other way to explain it.
Your suggestion just applies a vertical or horizontal scroll bar once the number of lines exceeds the amount of lines in the text window a person may create.

As you can see here, I typed one number per row and the number range is from 1 through 20. Once I get to row 13, the number is cut off and the remainder of the numbers is not viewable nor is it viewable when you print. The scroll bar is functional but not useful for when you print to PDF.

Yes I could increase the window size but my point is, I’m trying to have a text window where, whatever is typed within it, is printed. Hence the reason I want to essentially LOCK that window and limit the user’s ability to exceed characters more than the initial window size offers.

[Hrbrgr]

Please see my edited answer.