April 13, 2011

Adobe Acrobat Selected Form Field Color

In Adobe Acrobat there are two coloring options in the fields:


• The background of the field.(default is blue-grey)

• The color of the field while the user is entering information. (default is transparent)


This post covers the second option. If you're interested in eliminating the blue-gray background in all fields, visit this post.


Here's the PDF with form fields added.


When I select the first field, the grey coloring disappears.


1) To change the color while editing, go to Edit >

Add or Edit Fields


2) In this example I'm going to change the color for the "Name" field.

Right click on your field and select "Properties..."


3) Click on the "Appearance Tab"

Then click on "Fill Color"

I chose orange.


4) Back in the document close the form editing by clicking on the icon in the top-right corner.



Now when my cursor is in the "Name" field, it turns orange. When I tab out, or the field is no longer active, it will go back to the grey.

Adobe Acrobat Form Field Highlight Color

I recently made a form in Acrobat, but didn't want the fields to be highlighted with the blue-gray color that is the default. It took me some time to find the option that I wanted.

In Acrobat you are able to control two coloring options in the fields:

• The background of the field. (default is blue-grey)
• The field while the user is entering information. (default is transparent)

This post covers how to change the first option - to change it from the blue-grey. If you're looking for information on field color when it's active (onfocus) then check out this post.

Here's my PDF after adding the fields in Acrobat Pro:

1) To eliminate these boxes go to Acrobat > Preferences


2) Along the left-hand side go to "Forms"
You will see two colored boxes on the right. These control the color of the fields. I have them circled in the image. You may also want to uncheck the box that says "Show border hover color for fields"



Now my PDF looks like this:
*Please not that this changes how the forms look on your computer only. If you change the color on your machine, it will still look blue-grey on another machine with the default settings. In the same way, you may leave the color set to default, but on another person's machine, they may have their color set to magenta. The fields will show up as bright pink on that computer.