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Installed Acrobat a few weeks ago for this use case specifically. I feel like Preview used to be a lot better at editing fields, recently it has been a real pain.

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PDF has two types of forms: native and JS driven. I'd bet that the problems are with the JS. I'd also be willing to bet that Adobe makes Acrobat author forms in a way that intentionally breaks third party readers.

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Are there not any alternatives to Adobe Acrobat Reader on macOS for editing fields and other use cases listed in the other comments?

Apple's Preview does a pretty good job with generic pdf forms. Unfortunately, Adobe has created multiple types of pdf forms using different technologies and very complex specs. Apple does not support all of these. (You can also find many cases of PDF forms using Adobe tools that do not round trip between platforms).

PDF Export does a good job of filing in the gaps.

https://pdfexpert.com

Not just complex specs. Some of them are proprietary.

There's some non-free options:

Editing/Form Fill/etc: Nitro[1]

Signing: Nitro[1], HelloSign[2], airSlate[3], Smallpdf[4] (limited functionality)

[1] https://www.gonitro.com

[2] https://www.hellosign.com

[3] https://www.airslate.com

[4] https://smallpdf.com

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