[Sosa]

Greetings,

For some strange reason I'm unable to open an N-400 US naturalization application direct from the USCIS.gov website using Apple's application Preview / Safari / Firefox. I was able to finally view it by installing Adobe's PDF reader and downloading the file.

Is there a reason for this failure? Note that if you click on the other PDF files on the link below you can view them all, it is just the N-400 form itself that doesn't seem to work for me. I was able to open it on a Windows PC running IE 8.

USCIS - N-400, Application for Naturalization

Curious to know the answer. Thanks,

Sosa

[Thorzdad]

You're going to need to use Adobe Reader, I'm afraid. I can confrm that Reader opens it just fine.
The form was created using Adobe LiveCycle Designer. I'm guessing it doesn't create completely Mac-friendly forms.

[Sosa]

Yep, thanks for clearing that up.

[reader50]

The PDF file size is only 116 KB, too small for a government form. It must fetch the contents remotely. And it's encrypted.

Yep, they made it so only Adobe Reader can handle it.

[Cold Warrior]

I've seen this in the past year or so with government forms. It's very annoying, and often these forms are very long and can't be saved, although the n-400 is savable thankfully. Mac Adobe Reader 9.4.1 and 10.1.2 seem to have worked fine for me.

[tightsocks]

Is this an example of what used to be called 'Mac marginalization?'

[ghporter]

The form is both fillable and saveable, which is out of the normal realm of Preview's prowess. Adobe Reader, however, is built to handle this sort of thing, so it should be the application of choice for this form (and similar forms).

[BLAZE_MkIV]

Having done a short sting as a "Data Entry Specialist", please for the love of god fill in the form electronically instead of printing it out. Think of the children.