Well since I answered my own question, I thought I'd put the answer here just in case someone else can use it.
First, some griping about LiveCycle: (you have to put up with this because this product is horrible and I had to pay a fortune to use it...)
- In this day and age, why pc only? I needed only this one tiny but crucial function but was forced to borrow a pc and then purchase pc-only software ($300+) that I will doubtless use again. All of this should have been doable in Acrobat Pro with some scripting. (If your Google skills are better than mine and you find an answer, then please share it here and save others the pain and expense...)
- Why is there a complete disregard for any sense of accepted, standard shortcuts - keyboard, mouse dragging and other placement methods? Where is the ability to drag guides out from rulers? Why can I not hold shift while CTRL+dragging a form object to keep things lined up? BTW, ALT is how this copy-dragging should be done - not CTRL. Where are the smart-guides? Why, when I target an object in the Actions Builder do I have to manually scroll or tediously collapse each page in the tree menu to get to the items further down the list? What a waste of my precious and now non-profitable time on this project.
- I spent hours creating beautiful client-approved documents in InDesign only to discover that LiveCycle cannot import my work in a way that preserves my layout, causing me to have to rebuild all of my form elements. We're talking here about 9 documents, and almost 150 pages of pain-staking layout that had to be redone. And don't tell me that I should have used LiveCycle to begin with. This should have been much more seamless than it was.
Seriously, this product is expensive, non-inclusive, non-standard, non-compliant, and resembles using Windows 95 in ways that no sane person should have to put up with, yet alone pay for and put up with in 2014. Yes, Adobe High Priests, I'm talking in vain to you, knowing that this will fall upon indifferent, deaf ears.
OK - so here's the answer to my question. In a nutshell, the steps to hide/reveal pages based on the user checking or unchecking a box are:
- Create the checkbox by dragging "Checkbox" from the Object Library. Enter the question text and ensure that the Data Binding Name is unique for each instance. Let's say that all the check box items are on page 2 of the document. When the user selects the first checkbox, page three is revealed. So, for that check box, name it something like "CheckBox_Page3". The others would be called "CheckBox_Page4", "CheckBox_Page5", and so on.
- Select the first check box (Let's stick with CheckBox_Page3 as our example.) and then right-click it, choosing Actions=>Add Action (or Edit Action if an action already exists). The Action Builder dialogue opens.
- I'll need two actions for each check box. One that says, "If this box is unselected, then the page is hidden," and another that says, "If this box is selected, then the page is visible." Set the Condition to: "When check box CheckBox_Page3 is unselected" and the Result to: Show or Hide An Object [HIDDEN]. Then, scroll through and select Page 3 in the left hand column.
- Set the second action so that the Condition is: "When the check box CheckBox_Page3 is selected" and the Result to: "Show or Hide An Object [VISIBLE]. Then, scroll through again to select Page 3.
- Go through all of your check boxes until all the pages are set up with an unchecked/hidden and checked/visible configuration.
- The last thing to do is to select all of the pages that will be hidden/revealed in the left column. When that list is selected, visit the SubForm tab; Presence section and choose from the pick-list: "Hidden (exclude from layout)." Now the document will open with the appropriate pages hidden from view until a user selects the corresponding check box.
Save OFTEN. Test thoroughly and on multiple platforms. Good luck.
-Pete
