Using Field Hints on a Form

Field hints provide a brief description (or hint) of what can be stored in a field. This feature is often used to illustrate field syntax or the expected value for the field. For example, a field hint for a date field might illustrate the American date format of "mm/dd/yyyy" or the European date format of "dd/mm/yyyy", whereas a text field might illustrate the format for a phone number as "111-222-3333".

How It Works

Field hints display automatically in newly created documents. However, as soon as the user places the cursor in the field, the field hint disappears. Field hints are added through the properties dialog and can only be set for the following field types.

• Text
• Date
• Rich Text
• Rich Text Lite
• Names
• Readers
• Password

Field hints cannot be added to other field types due to the nature of the field (e.g., there is no place for a hint to be displayed in a radio button or checkbox field).

Implementation

To implement this solution, complete the following steps.

Note

This tab also includes a section called Help Description. Any text message added to this property setting will be displayed in the status bar located at the bottom of the form. The help message is displayed when the document is open in edit mode and the cursor is in the given field.