Tabbing through a form

A form’s tabbing order is the order in which the user selects fields when he or she presses the Tab key. This order is initiated when you add the first field and continues from there as you add fields to a form. Now if you know this ahead of time and are keeping track of the way you want the form filled out as you add fields, everything will work out fine. If you’re like the rest of us, you’ll probably have to set the tabbing order after you’ve finished adding fields to your form. Here’s how:
1. Click the Pages tab on the Navigation pane to open the Pages palette and select the page containing the form fields you wish to set tabbing order for.

2. Choose Page Properties on the Options menu at the top of the Navigation pane; in the Page Properties dialog box that appears, click the Tab Order tab.

3. Select from the options on the Tab Order tab as follows:

• Select the Use Row Order radio button to tab through rows from top to bottom and right to left.
• Select the Use Column Order radio button to tab through columns from left to right and top to bottom.
• Select the Use Document Structure radio button to use the document structure tree in a tagged PDF document.
• Select the Unspecified radio button (for compatibility with earlier versions of Acrobat) to tab through rows first and annotations second. This option is chosen by default for documents created in Acrobat 4 and earlier.

4. Click the Close button to set your new tab order.