Can acroforms be copied into an interactive LC form?

[Former Community Member]

Hi all,

I created a flowed form in LC ES2 for our area that opens new accounts recently and it is also my first exposure to LC so my knowledge base is very limited thus far.

Upper management has decided that instead of simply making the current "forms" (word, excel and some PDF files) interactive PDF's, they want to incorposrate all of the various forms into a single interactive form.

In my mind this is a huge task given that there are over 40 different types of accounts which have anywhere from 10-20 other documents needing completion. I've suggested beginning this task with a top 5 or top 10 most frequently opened account types but even that seems daunting to me.

What I have to work with is LC ES2 and Acrobat Pro X. From what I've experienced what seems to work best is to first create PDF's of the word/excel files using Acrobat, then import into LC if I want to create new interactive forms.

What I tried but have failed to do now is to copy a current PDF (acroform) into a new page/subform into my original flowed form. Ex. I have a generic disclosure document (4 pages) that was a word doc, I created a pdf fom acrobat, then attempted to copy and paste that form into a blank subform I added to the flowed form. I got an error indicating there was not enough space. I was hoping the subform paste would expand to fit whatever I was pasting in but that is not what I'm seeing.

Can this be done? If not, any suggestions on how to accomplish this task?

As a general estimate, I'd say I've been tasked to add nearly 50-75 separate pdf forms to this original then dynamically hide/show/prefill certain pages based on account type selections, etc.

I really hope there is some way to copy/import these rather than have to recreate each from scratch. Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated!

[Jono_Moore]

You won't be able to do it and have a proper dynamic form. You would be able to import the pdfs as artwork and lay fields on top but wouldn't have any flow. If you want to just show and hide static pages then importing PDF artwork would probably work ok.

The best procedure I've found is to recreate forms in Designer from scratch if you want a truly dynamic form. Importing from Word creates a big mess, I tried it a couple of times and moved on. Importing from Acrobat can work but again I find recreating from scratch a better way to go.

PDFs either have to be opened by Designer first or placed as background artwork you can't copy and paste them in.

I think you would go mad trying to get it all working. Forms, when they get quite large, can take a performance hit as well. Much better off grouping by similar function, etc. If you flowcharted the whole thing out you might get it working but it would be an arduous task.

We tried doing a large form that was tying to integrate forms from several government ministries and departments and we got it mostly working but it ended up being very difficult to work on. Also the clients didn't really seem to know what they wanted which didn't help.

We have successfully combined 3 or 4 forms into one and it works well for specific applications. But again, built from scratch.

Other people may have had success with this kind of thing but not us.

[Former Community Member]

Jono,

Thanks very much for the info. I too have found that importing a word doc does indeed create a mess!.

I thinks its obvious I am very new to LC so please forgive the silly question. How do I get the artwork PDF into a new page on my flowed form?

The form I tried is that 4 pager again. It does have a few fields which LC does recognize and keep but the text is artwork. LC creates as a new form but I need to get those pages into my flowed form. Am I back to creating these all from scratch or am I missing something? If I try to copy each page individually, the fields copy but the artwork doest copy.

[Jono_Moore]

Ugh, it's worse than I thought...hadn't done pdf artwork in Designer for a while.

I thought there was another way to place pdf artwork but you have to do a File>New>Create an Interactive Form with Fixed Pages. So you have to have all the pages you need in place first. It's then possible to swap pages in and out by updating the original pdf and doing an Edit>Replace Artwork. But that just gives you static pages, no flowing fields, etc.

I recommend this to everyone, if you're new to Designer pick up Creating Dynamic Forms with Adobe LiveCycle Designer by J.P. Terry. It's a great book for getting started with Designer.

There are some good tutorials around the net as well. Including a bunch of videos on youtube.

[kjaeggin]

It depends on what you are trying to do. Importing as Artwork is meant to preserve the original appearance ("picture") of the PDF as it was intended to be displayed. It can only ever be static with fixed pages. You can do simple field overlay, and have the data appear where it should. If you are trying to make your Acroform into a dynamic XFA form, you need to import it as interactive form with a flowable layout, and adjust / edit as necessary. Acroforms are static by nature, so you will need to make the form dynamic in Designer as per your requirements.

[Former Community Member]

Thanks Again,

I have seen that book title when I was searching for tutorial stuff and it is on my list of to do's. Never gave youtube a thought!

It's blocked here at work but I'll do some searching when I get home!

I'm at a loss at this point. I've gathered approximatly 60 pdfs on just 3 account types for this project.