Dynamic addition of text fields in PDF form? (Acrobat Pro DC)

[Former Community Member]

I am fairly new to Adobe Acrobat Pro (most of my experience is with Reader). I would like to create a Technical Design Document template PDF form in Adobe Acrobat for my future projects where I work. The problem, however, is that not all projects have the same number of key components / component sets. I would need to be able to dynamically adjust the number of form fields based on the number entries in the components list. I *could* do something like this in Excel... but that's just not very clean and is rather painful to look at with all those cells... I would much rather be able to do this in a PDF form.

Now, I was told by a colleague some time ago that it is possible for Adobe Acrobat to dynamically create textfields based on the number of entries made in another field. How exactly can I achieve this? I have looked through the available form fields and properties, but could not find a way of doing this...

Details of what I would like to be able to achieve:

-A user enters the names or IDs of parts in this field-
Part A556 Part B69 Part A103 Shell

-Acrobat dynamically creates text field sets for each entry above-
1.0 Component Identifier Part A556
1.1 Type <blank form field>
1.2 Purpose <blank form field>
1.3 Function <blank form field>
-etc... to 1.10-
2.0 Component Identifier Part B69
2.1 Type <blank form field>
2.2 Purpose <blank form field>
2.3 Function <blank form field>
-etc... to 1.10-

Until the last item of the first mentioned field. Each component could begin its own page, but that is just an option.

Thank you for your time and I look forward to your responses and help.

[Thom_Parker]

I believe your colleague was referring to LiveCycle Forms. A technology still supported by Adobe, but one that most consider dead.

It is possible to use Page Templates on regular PDF forms to create new pages. There are other methods, but this is the only reasonable way to dynamically create fields.

[Former Community Member]

Thanks for the reply Thom.

We don't have a license for LiveCycle Forms, so unfortunately that option cannot be pursued.

With regards to using page templates on PDF forms, how would you accomplish this? I could not find an option to link it dynamically to a textfield.

[Thom_Parker]

The idea is to create a page that is basically a table of extra fields.  You make this page a template and set it to hidden. Then you "spawn" this template into a new page from a script. Typically this is done from a script on a button labeled something like "Add More Entries". In addition, you could hide all the fields on the page and only expose the ones needed for the data.