Adobe Acrobat 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.
When it comes to delivering PDF forms, there are more options than with a web-based form. You can email the form to your audience or perhaps include it on a CD or DVD.
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.
Forms can be now be created from scratch in Acrobat. Just choose Create New Forms from the Forms menu and choose one of the built-in templates. The form is then created using a utility called Adobe Life Cycle Designer then saved as a PDF file.
As before, you can use forms made in other software such as Word or QuarkXPress. However, now Acrobat has a feature for automatically recognising where fields need to be inserted and creating them for you.
If you wish to use some of your printed forms as starting points for your interactive PDF form, then Acrobat’s Scan From Paper option will offer just what you need.
After you have created the basic form and perhaps had Acrobat automatically generate your text fields, you can add all the usual form controls, such as check-boxes, radio buttons and combo boxes. Then, to complete the form, you can add a submit button.
Another new feature in Acrobat 8 is to create a form which allows Acrobat Reader users to save form data when they have filled in the form. (This feature is normally only available with a full version of Acrobat.) To activate this facility, just choose “Enable Usage Rights in Acrobat Reader” from the “Advanced” menu.
Acrobat 8 Professional will allow you to distribute the form to a number of recipients via email. This of requires that you have an email client, such as Microsoft Outlook set up on your machine.
Acrobat 8 Professional now contains a facility for storing each of the returned form in one place, called a dataset. As you open each returned form, a dialogue box appears prompting you to add the form data to the dataset.
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.