Adobe Acrobat for Creative & Business – Forms Part III

So far we have discussed how to add and format form fields, we added text fields, multi-line text fields, a radio button and a drop down box. There are other fields that can be added and managed much like these fields.  You can add check boxes, list boxes, bar codes and buttons.  In the past buttons were fairly two dimensional in how they worked but now you can add interactivity to that button to make the form do so much more.

To add a button click Add New Field found under the form tools on the right, click Button from the sub-menu and click on the pdf where the button should go.

Name the button, and since this will be a submit button we will click the Required box.  Now click All Properties to launch the palette.  You can edit colors, fonts, and button states.

Let’s go straight to the Options Tab.  The first options is Layout, it allows us to make the button a text button or an icon which would allow us to use an image for the button.  Click the field to view possible options.

Select From:

• Label Only: is the default button with the name of that button on it.
• Icon Only: is the image we upload for an icon used for the button with no additional label added.

Or we can choose from combinations of both icon and label with: icon top, label bottom; label top, icon bottom; icon left, label right; label left, icon right; label over icon.  Choose the set up that best fits for this button.

Button Look

Next you can customize button behaviors by clicking the drop down and making a selection.

Button Behavior options:

• None: Keeps the appearance of the button the same.
• Push: Specifies appearances for the Up, Down, and Rollover states of the mouse. Select an option under State, and then specify a label or icon option:
• Up: Determines what the button looks like when the mouse button isn’t clicked.
• Down: Determines what the button looks like when the mouse is clicked on the button, but before it’s released.
• Rollover: Determines what the button looks like when the pointer is held over the button.
• Outline: Highlights the button border.
• Invert: Reverses the dark and light shades of the button.

If you are using an icon you can upload different icons for different button states under Icon and Label.  Clicking on Up, Down, or Rollover (if available for behavior you chose) then click Choose Icon on the right to select an image from your computer to use for an icon.

For label only or labels with the icon type the name that should appear on the button in the Label field.  Now the look of the button is set.  Let’s make it do something.

Button Actions

Click on the Actions Tab, the first thing we can do is select a Trigger with options of Mouse Up, Mouse Down, Mouse Enter, Mouse Exit, On Blur, On Focus. 

Select Mouse Down because we want the action to take place when the button is clicked.  From the select Action Menu you will set up what happens when the button is clicked. Choose from a variety of options including sending someone to a link, making a sounds, running a script showing a hidden layer or what we want to do submit a form.  Click the Add button.

The last step is setting up where the information entered into the form will be sent to.  At the top Enter a URL for this link type in where the form entries would go.  We have two choices we can enter an email for all the form data to be sent to or we can set up server information to dump the form info into.

• If we want to send form info to an email we would type mailto:youremail@email.com
• If we wanted to use a server we would put http://www.domain.com/folder/subfolder/whatever

Click Close at the bottom of the pallet and let’s view our completed form.

Check out the radio buttons, text boxes, drop down and submit button.  All as we set it up and ready for information to be entered into.  Notice the fields that were marked as required have a red outline.  Our form is ready for use!

If you missed the first two parts check out basics & text fields and additional fields previously posted.

Remember you can't do any of this without the full version of Adobe Acrobat, get your version now.  Adobe Acrobat 8.0 Standard Windows

Adobe Acrobat for Creative & Business – Forms Part II

Last week we got started with forms by adding a basic text input field, this week we are going to look at more form features and finish adding input fields to our example pdf.

We can add a multi-line text field the same way we added a single line text field, click Add New Field, then selecting Text Field and click on the pdf where we want it added.

Click All Properties to launch the palette. Just like the single form field you can edit a variety of things like the font and color.  To make this a multi-line form click the Options tab and click the Multi-line check box. Click the Close button to look at our form.

Multi-line is applied to the message box, however it is still small, and would hard to type much info in, so we need to make the box bigger.  Click on it to select, then click on one of the little dots on the side or bottom and drag it out to your desired size.

Now, let’s add more fields to the form.  In the Tools Menu on the right click Add New Field, then select Radio Buttons.  Click in the pdf file to place the radio button. 

To use a radio button group there needs to be more than one radio button placed.  Click Add Another Button at the bottom of the palette window and click in the pdf to placed another, continue doing this until all the radio buttons for this group are added.  It automatically assigned  a name and grouping for our buttons, each is unique so we don’t need to change it but we can by typing new names in each box.

Finally let’s add a drop down menu by clicking Add New Field in the Forms tools palette on the right, then click Drop Down from the sub-menu.  Click on the pdf where the new drop down box should go.

Like other input fields you can change the name and click the Required Field check box to not allow form processing until a selection is made from this field.  

Click on All Properties to add items to the drop down list.

Like the other entry fields you can edit the color, font and look of the test in Appearance.  To add items to the list click the Options tab.  Notice towards the top Items, Export Value and Item List. 

Type the name as you want it to appear on the actual form in the Item field.  If the information is going to be exported to a database the Export Field should have a value that matches the database configuration, for example I put TX for Texas.  This field can be left blank if not applicable.  


Click the Add button next to the Item field and you will see the name added to the Item List.  Repeat entering the name into the Item field and clicking the Add button until all items for the drop down are added.

Once all items are added move down to the item list, you can click on each item and move it up or down with the buttons to the right, this order will be the order items will display on the actual pdf form.  You can also delete items with that button.  

Remember clicking an item in the list and then clicking close (at the bottom of the palette) will make that item the default value for the drop down.

Check out our form!  We did radio buttons, text boxes including a multi-line box and a drop down.  I am going to finish dropping in form fields to get ready for next weeks buttons post!

Adobe Acrobat 8.0 Standard Windows

Adobe Acrobat for Creative & Business - Creating Forms

A great features that I have used throughout many versions of Adobe Acrobat is form fields.  You can open a pdf and add interactive fields.  Then email that form out for someone to fill out and send back.  The only catch is if someone is using just the free Reader version they can fill out the form but they can’t save it, so they would need to print it out. Anyone with a full version of Adobe Acrobat can save what they enter and submit via email or however you wish.

In adding form fields Acrobat offers text boxes, check boxes, radio buttons, lists, dropdowns, buttons and digital signatures.

In the Tools on the right click on Forms to access a list of options.

Click on Create to start the conversion process preparing your document to be a form.

This feature will detect any current form fields already in the document in addition to change the navigation options for adding new form fields.

I drug a text field on to my form by clicking Add New Field from the tasks panel, then selecting Text Field from the drop down. Click next to the name label on the page to drop it in.  

After placing the first text form field I see a yellow box. I added Name to the field name since I placed it next to the Name label of my document.  Then I clicked the Required Field text box. This will require the user to fill in that field.

It is important to remember to give each field in the yellow box a different name when setting up.  Any fields with like names will copy the user entry into all form fields with the same name.  What that means if I name my text box Name for my name and the same for the address fields then when I enter my name it will automatically fill that in to the address field as well.

You could stop there but I want to fine tune further. Click the properties link to launch field editing.  There are a lot of properties that can be edited  but for now we will just do some basic font edits.

Click the appearance tab at the top.  You can set the colors of the actual form field or a border for a form field.  You can change the font family, font size and color of the text that will be typed into the field. 

Click on the options tab at the top.  Click on the alignment drop down to choose right, left and center justification.  You can leave the default field blank or add helpful hints like please type name here.  There are a lot of great options to play with and I will go over some of them in future posts.

Once my formatting is selected I clicked close to set my form field.  Save it and test out your new form field.

Viola we just added a form field in Adobe Acrobat!  More fun with forms next week!

Adobe Acrobat 8.0 Standard Windows