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