PDF Forms?

[dandam]

Anyone use the PDF Forms feature in Acrobat to create forms? I'm thinking of using Flare to write the questionnaire and output it to PDF, then work in Acrobat to finish creating the form. I'm curious if anyone has attempted this route, and if there are tips or tricks for streamlining the process. Thanks!

[kirinawust]

Hi Matt,
I have the same question. Did you find an answer?

Ina

[jhmcmullen]

Well, another year and this time I'm wondering if anything came of this.

I've done it -- we create a form for customers to fill in relevant information and keep it someplace. I create the PDF in Flare and then add the form fields manually using Acrobat or a tool. (In the past it has been a tool but in the future it might be Acrobat, because we've gotten approval to get Acrobat.)

I have no idea if there's a neat way to automate the production in Acrobat; there certainly wasn't in the tools that I looked at--it was all manual.

I've done some cursory investigation into an open source Ruby package to turn an existing PDF into a form programmatically. That investigation foundered on my lack of knowledge of Ruby, but I'll keep learning Ruby and see if I can add it as, say, a post-processing step invoked from Flare.

Right now it's as streamlined as a Ford Model A.

[sarrantsvt]

It's very frustrating and very time consuming.

[robdocsmith]

This isn't really a topic for the Flare forums... however, the Adobe form tools aren't too bad provided the source document is prepared in advance, and provided your form isn't too complicated. Certainly it's a quick way to get the basic form created, from which you can refine it in acrobat to get the results you want.

In Acrobat (I'm on the latest version of Acrobat 22.002.20191.0), open the document you want to add forms to and from the right hand menu choose More Tools. From the page that opens up choose the option Prepare Form from the Forms and Procedures section. Click Start to let Acrobat search your page for form-like fields and convert them to form elements. Things that are detected as form fields include underlines using the _ character or table cells. Preceding text is taken to be the label for the form field. When preparing your document make sure that each field is clearly marked with the form-like elements.

You might have to play around with your Flare source to get the result you want with minimal effort in Acrobat. If your form includes check boxes or radio buttons you might have to play around to make sure you get the action you want (that they are grouped together correctly so that your desired "only one" or "multiple selection" options are used).

From there you can distribute the form and have the results fed into a spreadsheet.

Cheers,

Rob

[sarrantsvt]

Thanks Rob -- it looks like with some minor editing this will work for us.