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Subject:RE: Acrobat Forms in Word? From:"Donald H. White" <trlbldr -at- comcast -dot- net> To:"TECHWR-L" <techwr-l -at- lists -dot- techwr-l -dot- com> Date:Mon, 25 Jul 2005 08:54:03 -0400
Not to my knowledge, Mike. Even the check boxes or pull-down menus you enter
into a Word document using the Forms menu will not become check boxes or
pull-downs in Acrobat if you JUST use the Acrobat plug-in in Word to create
a PDF version.
The process of creating an Acrobat form is somewhat easier in Acrobat
Professional 6 than if you use version 7, although the latter is more
comprehensive. In the former, you use the forms menu to draw elements into
the appropriate cells of the Word form, then you select the form field
(Check box, Radio button, Text field, etc.) from the options in the Acrobat
forms menu. You can adjust the behaviors for each element, and it's a good
idea to think your way through the process to add elements in the order you
wish the user to use while tabbing through the form. (You cannot change the
tab order after you're done, using version 6 of Acrobat Professional.)
Version 7 doesn't allow you to add form fields from the Acrobat PDF
interface. Instead, it calls up Acrobat Designer 7.0, an application new to
me. This scans your Word or PDF document (if you converted Word-->Acrobat)
and creates from it another PDF, presenting it in design view. Check boxes
and text fields from Word are present, but as grayed areas that will accept
a user's input, although the check boxes don't appear to be check boxes
(they're gray squares to the eye). You can use Designer 7 to create forms
from scratch or based upon one of the several templates Adobe includes with
the application. Designer 7 creates forms based on an underlying XML
structure, contains Java strings, allows Java input, and is generally a good
solution. However, it's interface is occasionally perplexing and it's a
memory hog.
Sorry for the length of this response. Hope (some of) it helps!
Cheers,
Donald H. White
Senior Technical Writer/Editor
James River Technical Communications LLC
804.795.2914
dwhite -at- jrtcllc -dot- com
www.jrtcllc.com
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