Getting back a "useable" form

[Peter_Spier]

I'm working on collateral material for the honors program at the community college where I teach InDesign and printing technology, so I'm fairly savvy, but not expert in Acrobat.



It makes sense to have a fillable application form posted on our website for prospective students, and to have a printed version as well, so naturally I thought of doing this with Acrobat and live cycle designer after creating the form in InDesign.



My problem is that the program director wants to have both hard copy AND a digital version (don't ask) returned. Because I have Acrobat Pro on my system, as do most campus machines, I can fill out the form and save it as a PDF with fields holding the data intact which can be emailed to the director, but people with only reader are able only to print.



I'm beginning to see from other posts that what I need is a submit button and a script set up on the server to receive the XML and turn it back into the filled PDF for transfer to the director.



Acrobat help has been less than enlightening in this regard. After reading it I thought I was going to be able to receive PDFs directly, but my experimenting gets me only the XML in my mailbox which I have no way to handle.



I could use some advice and direction.



Peter

[Former Community Member]

Make a button, then under object, field, you want to set the control type to submit.



Then the submit tab will appear, and you can submit to a url - or mailto:emailadd@email.com, and you can change the 'submit as" type, to pdf.

[Peter_Spier]

I'm working in LiveCycle Designer 8.0, and all I see for buttons that allow me to submit are Email Submit or HTML Submit. The plain button doesn't have a submit property available that I can find.



I can add an email address tot he submit by email button, and the button functions fine, launching the mail program, but it attaches the file as XML, and I can't find anywhere to change that.



Peter

[Peter_Spier]

I'm also having some trouble with the tabbing order on the fields. I can't seem to control it, and I want to reverse a couple of them.

[Former Community Member]

Sarah, thanks for the info this was just the help I was looking for.

[Former Community Member]

I'm also using LC D 8



The standard button is in library, standard...



Look at the object tab, and then the field tab. Control type is near the bottom of the tab..

[Peter_Spier]

AH!!!!



Thank you, thank you, thank you!



Are there any limits on how many times this can be submitted this way? I read something in another post about having to enable Reader options (which I also don't yet see) and there being a limit of 500 submissions.



Found the tabbing order, though!



Peter

[_Aandi_Inston_]

> I read something in another post about having to enable Reader options (which I also don't yet see) and there being a limit of 500 submissions.



This limit is in the EULA for Acrobat. If you enable a form, you are

responsible for making sure the form has no more than 500 users. If

this is exceeded you will be in breach of contract, so if you cannot

prevent this possibility you must not use Acrobat for this: Adobe sell

a server product instead.





Aandi Inston

[Former Community Member]

As far as I know there's no problem..

[Peter_Spier]

Thanks.

[Peter_Spier]

Sarah,



Sorry to be a pain. Is there any way that you know to, for example, grab a name from a field and append it to the filename before submission?



I only ask this because the people who will receive the forms are not particularly adept at computer operations, so I'd like to automate as much as possible before it gets to them.



Peter

[Former Community Member]

http://www.acrobatusers.com/forums/ask_an_expert/questions/view/1869/

[Former Community Member]

Sarah I don't know if you can answer my question now? I created a form and added a Submit by email button, entered the url as emailto:xxx@xxx.com. I attached the file to an email and sent it. It opens in Reader 8.1 but the Submit button does not work. It also says that only the data will be sent back. What format will that data be in. How do I get the filled out form back?

[Former Community Member]

you want to url to just be mailto:xxx@xxx.com



If you use a submit by email button I think the data will be in xml format as default.



Use a normal button instead, then you can easily change the format that the data will be in to pdf- ie the filled out form will be returned



With a normal button you can submit to the url mailto:xxx@xxx.com as above..



s

[Former Community Member]

I'm sorry I did use mailto:

But it still does not open my email program.

[Former Community Member]

I use a normal button > selected Submit > clciked on the Sumbit tab and entered the url and entere submit as "PDF" > and the Saved the file. Sent it to another computer here that only has Reader on it. Was able to open the file > fill in the fields > Reader tells me that it can not save the information I entered > it can only send the data not the whole form > I should print it to have a copy.

I click the Sumbit bt email button and nothing happens.

[Former Community Member]

http://www.acrobatusers.com/blogs/pdftrainer/2006/08/01/reader-submit/

[Peter_Spier]

Sarah,



Thanks for the links. It's going to take me a while to digest all the information. I may go back to the honors committee and ask if they understand the complexity of what they are asking, and if they actually need the data submitted this way.



Peter

[Former Community Member]

Sarah read the link. I believe it said that Reader 7 would work. Downloaded a version 7 of Reader. It does not work. It comes up with "Operation not permitted"

How is a person with only reader suppose to fill out a form and send it back?????

This is way to complicated

[Peter_Spier]

Following links within links, I was led to this techdoc:

http://kb.adobe.com/selfservice/viewContent.do?externalId=333232&sliceId=1

which implies that a rights-enabled form should be fillable and savable, but as soon as I try to enable rights under the commenting menu, I get a message saying the PDF will no longer be fillable, and that seems to be the case.



I've also come across a suggestion to submit as FDF rather than PDF, but I don't see how to do that, either, within LCD. I can do it in Acrobat, but I'm having trouble creating a button with a label that can be read.



This is VERY frustrating.

[Former Community Member]

Peter, are you trying to create a form that can be sent, printed and saved?



I found this and it worked:

1) Add a button (not the email submit button, just the "button")

2) Set the Control type to Submit

3) On the submit tab, add " mailto:mysister@myhouse.com" in the Submit to URL box

4) Change the submit as drop down to PDF

5) Save the form

6) Open the form in professional 8.0 (not livecycle designer)

7) Go to the Advanced option on the toolbar and select "Enable Usage Rights in Adobe Reader" which will require you to save the file again.