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    Uncaught ReferenceError: acf is not defined

    Symptom: The browser console shows Uncaught ReferenceError: acf is not defined, and the form on the page misbehaves — fields don’t initialise, validation doesn’t fire, or interactive controls (date picker, wysiwyg, media buttons) sit dead.

    Cause: The acf JavaScript global hasn’t been defined by the time code that depends on it runs. Two common reasons:

    1. An asset-optimisation plugin is interfering with how ACF’s scripts load. Plugins that combine, defer, async, or minify scripts often struggle with dynamically enqueued assets like the ones Advanced Forms (and ACF) rely on. The result is acf-input either failing to load, loading in the wrong order, or executing after code that already expects acf to exist.
    2. A jQuery UI dependency has been deregistered. Advanced Forms depends on ACF, which depends on jquery-ui-sortable and jquery-ui-resizable, which in turn depend on jquery-ui-core. Some “speed up WordPress” plugins or theme tweaks deregister these lower-level scripts. When that happens, WordPress drops the higher-level dependencies too — and acf-input never gets printed onto the page.

    Fix: Work through these in order.

    1. Temporarily deactivate asset-optimisation plugins (anything doing combine / defer / async / minify on scripts). Reload the page. If the error goes away, the optimisation plugin is the culprit — re-enable it and exclude the following handles from any combine / defer / async rules:

      • acf-input
      • af-forms-script
      • jquery-core, jquery-migrate
      • any acf-input-* field-type scripts (e.g. acf-input-date-picker)

    2. Check whether jQuery UI has been deregistered. Look in your theme or active plugins for calls like wp_deregister_script( 'jquery-ui-core' ) (or jquery-ui-sortable, jquery-ui-resizable). Remove them. If you need to keep them deregistered for performance reasons, you’ll need to re-register the specific handles ACF depends on so the dependency chain stays intact.

    3. Confirm the page actually has an ACF context. If the form is being rendered out-of-band (e.g. injected via AJAX into a page that doesn’t normally render an Advanced Form), ACF’s assets won’t be enqueued at all. See the AJAX-rendering doc linked below for the af_enqueue() fix.

    If none of the above resolves it, the page-load error is most likely a different JavaScript error firing earlier and halting execution before acf gets a chance to define itself. Open the console, look for the first red error on the page, and start there.

    See also

    Section titled “See also”