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You are here: MacNN Forums > Enthusiast Zone > Art & Graphic Design > PDF form that can be filled out?

PDF form that can be filled out?
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tpicco
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Join Date: Feb 2004
Location: Hell's Kitchen, NYC
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Jun 26, 2008, 01:58 PM
 
I am using Acrobat Professional 6.02... I just did a PDF form, saved from InDesign, to serve as an insertion order for a magazine. I Ffigured they could e-mail it to clients, who would print it out, fill it out and mail or fax it back...

They were wondering if it could be made so that the person receiving it could fill it out on their computer and e-mail it back... do they need to have Acrobat Professional? Are there any tricks I need to know? (I am so out-of-the-loop...)
     
Thorzdad
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Jun 26, 2008, 05:21 PM
 
Yes, you will need Acrobat Pro in order to insert the live form objects (text fields, radio buttons, checkboxes, etc) It can be a tedious job, if it's a long form with many fields. And AcroPro is very particular about the order in which you create fields and objects. Get one item wrong, and your tabbing order goes awry. And I was never actually able to verify if the darn thing actually worked the way it should in Acrobat READER. That is, whether a user could successfully fill it out and SAVE the thing with the info intact.

My experience with creating a live PDF form is exactly ONE. After all the grief, we decided to punt and revert to a printable form.
     
peeb
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Jun 26, 2008, 05:38 PM
 
what's wrong with web forms?
     
bluedog
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Jun 27, 2008, 09:41 AM
 
One reason to use a PDF to serve BOTH paper and internet purposes. If you set up the form with the text entry fields in Acrobat Professional, the end-user will simply open it in Adobe Reader and fill out the form and have the option to SAVE the file with a new filename and email it back, or PRINT and fax/mail back their entry.

Thorzdad is right, you can only add the form-field elements within Acrobat Pro (which becomes a pain if you have a LOT to create). The only nice thing about this is your form fields will save in the PDF and you can still edit the PDF in Illustrator for structural changes while maintaining the interactive form elements. If it is a single-page form, creating it in Illustrator has made my life easier when I've used it because of the 'preserving Acrobat form fields' effect. Just make sure you have the 'preserve illustrator editing' for an original copy of the file before trying to compress and streamline your form.

If you create your form with the open areas for text fields you can simply OVERLAY your form entry fields in Acrobat Pro and make the attributes how you like on one and then COPY/PASTE to duplicate the field for other entries. Assigning custom names to the buttons is helpful if you are going to be integrating the data back into a database in an automated fashion. But other than that just let Acrobat assign its "text1", "text2" names. Its not so bad unless the form is multi-page in which case NAIL DOWN your copy and layout before making the entry fields.

The interactive and form elements of Acrobat PDFs are its weakest link in my mind. The editing and maintainability of files just isn't there.

As for creating a web form, it requires a server to handle the input and tabulating data and ensuring it isn't tampered with or bogus information or isn't submitted via bots, etc. is just a pain.

The web is becoming a mangled mess of bots trying to post spam in any form entry fields. The methods to overcome this simply put up additional hassle for the end-user. I wish it weren't so, but sometimes a paper form is just as well or better than online.
     
calverson
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Jun 27, 2008, 03:41 PM
 
I am not sure if they make it anymore, but I used a program called Adobe LiveCycle Designer, which did the trick.
     
calverson
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Jun 27, 2008, 03:43 PM
 
All they would have to have is Adobe Acrobat Reader. There would be a button on the pdf that would say "submit" and when they click that, it e-mails the data to a specified address.
     
bluedog
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Jun 28, 2008, 09:20 PM
 
The only problem with the email submit button is many people are using web-based email only. If your desktop doesn't have an email client set for the desktop to actually send email, then their basic email program (whatever it may be) will open and not be configured to send the email and may actually prompt to set up an account.

Some web emails can be set up as the default email client. I seem to recall "hotmail" can be set up for Windows as the default. Haven't seen how it would work in OSX.
     
tpicco  (op)
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Jun 29, 2008, 02:42 AM
 
Thanks to all who added comments
     
yugyug
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Join Date: Dec 2004
Location: Tokyo
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Jul 5, 2008, 08:39 AM
 
thanks everyone, always wanted to know how to do this.


Its a pity form fields are not better integrated into Indesign - it would be great if you could design and action everything in the one spot...
ππ>_<ππ
     
   
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