Creating And Distributing Acrobat PDF forms
One of the many uses of PDF files is to offer a way for people to gather information via an interactive form. Adobe Acrobat 8 Professional has some nifty features for creating such forms, distributing them and tracking responses.
The PDF format is a great choice for forms since it will allow the user to see the form exactly as it was created. Web forms, by contrast, can vary depending on the operating system and browser software being used.
One also has a wider variety of options when it comes to distributing PDF forms: for example, email, CD or DVD. Email, in particular offers a very direct distribution channel.
Forms are not new to Acrobat: the feature has been available since version 3. However, Acrobat 8 Professional has seen a great enhancement to the way interactive forms are handled.
Acrobat has traditionally been a “magpie” application, relying on other applications to create all of its content. Now, however, forms can be created in Acrobat based on a wide variety of pre-created templates: invoices, timesheet, expenses etc.
As with previous versions of Acrobat, forms created in other packages can be used as the starting point for an Acrobat form. Acrobat 8 Professional will even automatically recognise the form layout and generate form fields automatically.
Adobe Acrobat 8 Professional’s Scan From Paper feature also allows you to create an interactive PDF form that is based on a printed document.
Once you have the basic form created, you can add in all the standard form controls. In addition to text fields, PDF forms support combo boxes, option buttons, checkboxes and, of course, submit buttons.
The advanced menu in Acrobat 8 Professional contains a new feature (“Enable Usage Rights in Acrobat Reader”) which allows Acrobat Reader users to fill out your form and then save the form data. Normally, this can only be done with a full version of Acrobat Professional.
You can send your interactive PDF form to any number of users by clicking on the “Form” menu and choosing “Distribute Form”. You can select a series of emails from an Outlook address book or just enter recipients manually.
Completed forms are emailed back to you when the user clicks on the submit button. When you open each returned form Acrobat prompts you to add it to what is termed a dataset, a repository of form data.
Once all the forms have been returned and the data added to the dataset, you just open the dataset and export it as a CSV (comma separated values) file. This format is compatible with programs like Excel and Access which can then be used to store and analyse responses to your forms.