Need to Merge an Adobe XML file with a normal PDF

[Former Community Member]

The problem...

I have created an order form in Adobe LiveCycle Designer (pre-ES).  The customer's requirements force us to merge their purchase order (a flat standard PDF) with the order form I have created to get the complete PDF to bill with.  Previously we were using a form created in another software and printing to PDF to merge the 2 PDF files.  The thought process with creating a form in LiveCycle Designer was "Oh 2 PDF's we can just merge them" ... we were very WRONG.  And please don't suggest "Packaging" the files... it won't work for our processing system... we've already tried .

What we know now (had we known it before we'd have never purchased the licensing for LiveCycle Designer to start with)...

You can NOT merge a PDF that has XML in it with Adobe Proffesional.

Temporary Solution...

We know we can print to PDF and then merge the files... this gets us the result we need, but it takes longer to print to PDF from these XML files than it did from the previous versions of the order forms in created in other software.

Is there another solution? 

Plea for help!  The users that are forced to do the process of printing to file and merging are ready to riot and/or go back to the "other" software.

[Former Community Member]

Hello!

There are a couple terms you can google:

"PDF Concatenate Forms iText"

"Merge XML data with PDF Forms"

Concatenating PDFs means you join multiple forms together into one PDF.

Did you need to merge, or concatenate the forms?

Either way there are a couple of methods to do this programmably.

iTextSharp (.NET)

iText (Java)

FDFToolkit.net (.NET)

iText products are open source, and have a learning curve, and support is provided on a Open mailing list.

iText products are free ($) but can cost you time and money to research the methods.

Useful Links:

http://www.fdftoolkit.net/

Message was edited by: NKOWA

[Former Community Member]

Okay so I've learned this...

What I need now is the code for the javascript button to go in my LiveCycle Designer form that will save to a flat image only PDF.  I have about 300 end users that are going to be using this form so it needs to be something as simple as the standard Email button that saves the XML only ... but the difference is I want the image of the completed PDF as the output.

  I can't believe I'm the only one who wants a flat image off of one of these forms.  I know that XML is great and I use it for many other customers, but for this customer I must combine their order form (the form we created in LiveCycle Designer) with their purchase order a flat image only to create a 2 page document that has both images in it.

Thank you for any assistance you can provide!!!

[Former Community Member]

Maybe if I word this differently someone can give me an answer that I can use.

I need a Button that I can put in my LiveCycle Designer form to somehow either SaveAs, Print to PDF, or Email that will save the completed form as a FLAT image.

I know there are other programing languages and extension out there that can do all kinds of exciting stuff, but I am very limited on the resources I have and I do not have the software needed to do many of the things suggested to other users.