Pulling Values for Drop-Down from an Excel file

[joflo723]

I have about 120 forms that each have a dropdown list for our 17 different locations. The problem I'm foreseeing (and dreading) in the future is when we add or delete a location, I'm going to have to go into all 120 forms and change the values in the dropdown lists.

I was thinking the best solution would be to have the dropdown lists on each of the forms pull their values from ONE location (an Excel file) that I could add or remove locations from. Then I'd only have to update ONE file vs. 120 files.

The thing is I can NOT figure out how to do this. I know I need an xml file, and I have to bind it to all of the documents, but I cannot figure out the steps. Can anyone point me in the right direction? OR...if anyone knows of a better solution, I'd love to hear it.

Thanks!

Jo

[joflo723]

Bumping this.

One thing I have found that has helped tremendously is John Brinkman's blog post here about populating list boxes with XML:

http://blogs.adobe.com/formfeed/2009/10/populating_list_boxes_1.html

It has ALMOST solved my problem, but not quite. I asked John about it in the comments, but was wondering if anyone else has the same problem as I am having. When I save both his sample XML and PDF file into a folder together, and open the PDF in Adobe Pro, the dropdown boxes in the dog section do not work. However, if I open it in LiveCycle and hit the Preview tab, it does work.

My users are going to be using Adobe Reader, and so far I have not been able to get it to work with either Reader or Pro.

Could someone please download John's files and see if the "dog" section works when you open it in either Adobe Pro or Reader? Maybe it's just me and some screwy Windows setting. Second question will be...why is it working fine in LiveCycle but not in Adobe Pro?

Thanks!

Jo

[joflo723]

Um, me again.

Ok - John replied that the data (xml) has to be embedded by importing the xml into the form. That works when I do it from Adobe Pro, but my question is this...is there no way to have the form automatically import the data? This is for Adobe Reader users. My xml form is on the company intranet, as are the forms. I just need a way to tell each pdf form to import the xml data upon opening each form.

Anyone?

Thanks,

Jo

[Former Community Member]

Hi Jo

Unfortunately I don't have the answer.

But it is a really interesting subject. I may use it in some of my forms, if you find a solution to make it work from Adobe Reader. I hope someone will answer.

Kirstine

[Niall_O_Donovan]

Hi,

When it comes to users with Adobe Reader there are certain restrictions on what they can and cannot do. A summary is here: http://assurehsc.ie/blog/index.php/2010/05/using-livecycle-forms-in-acrobat-and-reader/ with a PDF summary.

When a user has Adobe Reader they can only import XML data (and export XML data) if the form has been Reader Enabled using the Adobe LiveCycle Reader Extensions ES2 server program.

Hope that helps,

Niall