I have form fields that I need to duplicate across large documents, so that I have a document with base images that all vary by page, but form fields that are identically placed everywhere (image varies only in the text that's handwritten onto the same standard form, so placement of digital fields is identical). I have come to terms with the fact that if I try to do a document that is large (and that means above 30 pages), the process of dupication starts our fast, and grinds to a halt between pages.30-40. It moves, but so slowly that it's painful to watch. Reality is I have some documents that are 1,500 pages, and so trying those proved useless. My workaround has become:
1) split document into max 20 page subsets
2) drop the page with the form fields (fields are the same on every page) into each subset doc
3) go into each subset doc, and edit forms/copy all/duplicate/wait/close editing/delete first page (which is the 'master' template of fields)/save
4) combine all subset docs into single pdf (I end up distributing out single docs, so that processing volunteers can convert the handwritten text into form fields, and I need the field names to be consistent...this is not possible if you have the same fields duplicated across, as it forces an entry into the first form field to populate throughout the rest of the doc...fortunately when a doc is split, adobe drops the suffix on the form field name)
5) send out single docs, gather back and consolidate the data that is in the fields into a csv
The steps of splitting, duplicating, combining, splitting, is proving to be incredibly tedious, and no way to scale if I were to have to process 3-7K forms in a shot (which will happen soon enough). Am I missing some way to make duplication across one (very large) document as swift as for a small documents?