Technology How To

Introduction
Adobe Acrobat makes it easy for you to create, fill in, and submit electronic PDF forms. You can design and create an entirely new form, or you can quickly convert your existing paper and electronic forms to PDF and then add PDF form fields. You can create forms with text boxes, buttons, check boxes, combo boxes, list boxes, radio buttons, and signature fields.

Submitting an Adobe Acrobat form
It is more common to submit a form created in Adobe Acrobat than to be the creator of the form. While it is possible to submit a form to a database via the web, it is more common to save the form and email it to the recipient as an attachment.

WFU ThinkPad users and anyone else who has the full version of Adobe Acrobat on their computers can open a PDF file, fill it out and save it back to their hard drives. All other users can open the file, fill it out and print it but CANNOT save it to their computer. (So remember to print out 2 copies if you need one for your records). Additionally, the full version of Adobe Acrobat is required to create forms.

To Fill in the Form Fields
Select the hand tool on the left side of the Acrobat toolbar (as seen in the image above) if it is not already selected. When the hand tool turns into an “I” beam icon, the cursor is over a form field. Move the cursor to the field and double click. Begin typing (please note not all fields have a border).

To Save the Completed Form
Go to the File menu and select Save As or press the floppy disk icon on the Acrobat toolbar (see above).Select a location for the file in the Save As window and click Save. Remember, the Save option only appears when the user has the full version of Adobe Acrobat. Without the full version of Acrobat, users may only print the file, not save the file or create forms.

Creating Forms from a Word Document in Adobe Acrobat

Begin by saving the form in MS Word file as a PDF file. To save the MS Word form as a PDF file, use the “Create PDF” button in the MS Word button bar shown above.

Creating Forms from within Adobe Acrobat
To bring an image or other file type into Acrobat, go to: File>Create PDF select one of the options:

• From File
• From Multiple Files
• From Scanner
• From Web Page

Note: Acrobat 8 includes Adobe LiveCycle Designer for designing XML forms to be rendered as PDF or HTML files. However forms created in LiveCycle can only be edited with that program and are only readable with Acrobat reader 6 and higher.

Creating Form Fields
Once the file is in Adobe Acrobat the form fields must be added. Form fields are drawn with the Text Field Tool.

Text Field Properties
There are seven tabs that control the properties of the various fields.

• General contains the form field name and some common properties. It can also be used to tag a field as required and read only.
• Appearance is used to control what the user sees when filling out the form.
• Options control alignment, size and scrolling among other things.
• Actions allows for a field to generate an action such as launch a file or web page.
• Format is used to distinguish the contents as text, numbers, date, etc.
• Validate can check a field contents against a formula or other calculation
• Calculate allows contents of fields to generate mathematical totals.

Creating Links (Internal and External)
To create an internal link you must follow these steps.

• Step One-click the link tool Tools > Advanced Editing > Link Tool
• Step Two-use the link tool to draw a box anywhere in the document (over text or in white space).
• Step Three-with the Create Link window open, select one of the four choices for link actions.

• Go to page view, select the destination page number for the link, and set the page magnification.
• Open a File, click Browse to select the destination file, and click Select. If the file is an Adobe PDF document, specify how the document should open. Click OK.
• Open a Web Page, provide the URL of the destination Web page.
• Custom Link, click OK to open the Link Properties dialog box. You can set actions associated with the link, such as reading an article, in this dialog box.
  

Setting the Tab Order Between Fields

• Step One-Click the Pages tab in the navigation pane.
• Step Two-Select a page thumbnail, and choose Page Properties from the Options menu.
• Step Three-In the Page Properties dialog box, click Tab Order, and select the tab order