Format from Adobe discontinued in 2011
On November 20, 2018, the Defense Department switched their document generation system to use an antiquated document format called Dynamic XFA (XML Forms Architecture). XFA is not part of the PDF standard. It was included in Adobe LiveCycle in 2002 when the company acquired Canadian service provider Accelio, who was using XFA. This produced confusion as Adobe already had its own way of handling forms called AcroForms.
Adobe announced the discontinuation of the Dynamic XFA format in 2011. It is not part of the PDF 2.0 standard and is not included in their latest PDF creation tools.
This has been causing havoc all over DOD and the private sector as people have been unable to open many military documents with anything other than Adobe Acrobat Software. Attempting to open these files in the web browser produces this message:
“To view the full contents of this document, you need a later version of the PDF viewer. You can upgrade to the latest version of Adobe Reader from www.adobe.com/products/acrobat/readstep2.html
For further support, go to www.adobe.com/support/products/acrreader.html”
This change affects documents from DIBBS, a primary source of solicitations and awards for the defense department. After receiving many complaints from end-users about the format change, DIBBS released this statement:
Some suppliers have commented that they cannot open the solicitation and/or awards on DIBBS. This is not an issue with DIBBS, but your browser settings when it comes to Adobe. The following links are provided that can assist and properly setting your computer to read Acrobat Adobe documents. A way of testing this being the issue, if you can download the PDF to your local PC and then open it, then you need to update the plug-in in your browser.
Here is some info from Adobe found on the web:
https://helpx.adobe.com/acrobat/kb/change-in-support-for-acrobat-and-reader-plug-ins-in-modern-web-.html
https://helpx.adobe.com/acrobat/kb/cant-open-pdf.html
Unfortunately, this doesn’t help people who want to view the documents in a web browser instead of opening the bloated Adobe Acrobat program. It also doesn’t help people using Macintosh or anyone who wants to open these documents on an iPad, iPhone or Android. Shortly afterward, DIBBS began receiving complaints that their full-text search was not working. This is likely because their own system is unable to convert these Dynamic XFA documents into something that can be searched. When reaching out to DIBBS about the issue we received this response:
We did switch to another format due to security. This may be affecting the text search. The Tech Teams are still working to solve this. We were unaware of the original switch and have not been informed as to the solution to this yet.
The DIBBS Team
Its obvious that they have discovered the huge mistake and are attempting to resolve it. We anticipate that they will migrate to a standardized PDF format which would resolve the above issue. In the meantime, contractors are dealing with the inconvenience of trying to open these obscure files.
Because the format is obsolete, there are very few tools that can work with it. At BidLink, we have explored over a dozen different tools to potentially convert these files into normal, flat PDF files. So far, none of these tools produce an acceptable result. We will continue to look for solutions, but are hopeful that DOD will simply abandon Dynamic XFA entirely.
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