text fields help

[fouadkada]

hi everyone...

im using livecycle es2.

i have imported a pdf document and then started adding textfields to it....what i need to do it make only the text fields printable and the original pdf only viewable on screen...is it doable without adding the pdf document as an image because im having problems there too because in this scenario im obliged with text fields that have captions and also when i print the form, the fields are not placed correctly because the image is shifted by 0.25inches

please help.

thanks in advance

[Niall_O_Donovan]

Hi,

When you import an existing PDF into LC Designer ES2, certain features are not available. One potential option would be to open the original form in Acrobat and export the form to an image format (JPEG, TIFF, PNG) and start a new form in LC Designer. Then drag an image object onto the Master Page and associate your original pdf image to this. Remember to tick 'embed image'.

If you place the image on the master page, you can place this at the edge of the page, outside of the content area. This should result in it looking like the original PDF. You can then go to the design pages and add your form objects.

To make the original PDF viewable on screen only, select the image object on the Master Page and go to Object > Field tab and from the visible dropdown select 'visible, screen only.

Hope that helps,

Niall

[fouadkada]

thanks a alot for your prompt and thorough reply,

my question now is how to add textfields without caption...i tried deleting the caption text but the caption text still occupy it's place, all i need is a text field that i can make to occupy a certain amount of space without caption.

is this achievable ?

also i have another question, why when i add textfields, it seems like i am obliged to them to specific places in the form and it seems that i am obliged to resize them based on a hidden grid line ? why can't i resize them and place them like i want freely ?

thanks in advance

[Niall_O_Donovan · Accepted solution]

Hi,

When you select your textfield you can go to the Layout tab and set the caption position to 'none'. This will remove the caption. Also note that in the Font and Paragraph tabs you can set the visual appearance of both the caption and value together or independently of each other.

You can turn on/off the snap to grid in a couple of places. One in the Drawing Aids palette (which is available from the Windows menu):

Or you can toggle it from the Standard toolbar:

A word of caution: The tabbing order from one field to another is affected by their relative x, y positions on the form, working from top left. So if an object on the right is a fraction higher than one on the left it will get focus first on tabbing. So if you do turn off the snap to grid, it is a good idea to use the align tools to keep control.

You see on the Drawing Aids above you can show/hide the grid and also change the grid to mm and change the spacing of the grid in both x and y.

Good luck,

Niall

[fouadkada]

Thanks again a lot for your time and help, your post was really the correct solution to my problem, however there is still one effect that was easy to accomplish in adobe acrobat 6 pro that i cant accomplish in livecycle es2, its the auto font that im struggling with, back in adobe acrobat 6 pro, there was this checkbox that you check that enables the font to get smaller and smaller in a text area in order to fit properly, in livecycle i could achieve the same effect, i read the following post http://forums.adobe.com/message/2782279 but it didnt help.

is it doable in livecycle es2 ?

another thing that i noticed in livecycle is that the preview feature and distribute feature are grayed out, is it because im using the trial edition ?

Thanks in advance

[Niall_O_Donovan]

Hi,

The OP in that thread shows the way. If you select the textfield and sets its font size to '0'.

Then when you enter the field in Acrobat, the font size will start off at 12point and reduce down as information is typed in that exceeds the capacity of the field.

The form may have to be saved as Dynamic, I am not sure.

The Preview feature may be grayed out because of the way you imported the form or that web previewed is not ticked in  the preferences in Acrobat itself.

To distribute the form you would have to open it in LC Designer. You can't distribute from LC Designer Preview.

Hope that helps,

Niall

[fouadkada]

thanks a lot again,

i still have few questions:

1. does live cycle run on mac ?
2. the second question is regarding distribution:

the thing is that i opened livecycle and created a new blank form and then in the master page a added a background and then in the design view i added some text fields but as you can see from the image below that the distribute form is always grayed out, what could be the problem ?

Thanks again

[Niall_O_Donovan]

Hi,

1 - No, LC Designer is a Windows only programme. I have it running on Windows 7 on a Mac, using Parallels vm software.

2 - You can't distribute a form from within LC Designer. You might be able to if you had the full LC Enterprise Suite. But as a standalone, you can't. However you can distribute a form from Acrobat. See the Forms menu when you open your form in Acrobat:

Good luck,

Niall

[fouadkada]

thanks again a lot...

i will install version adobe acrobat 9 instead of my outdated version 6...

[murrjames]

Hi Niall O'Donovan, I have been looking for Livecycle answers, cant get any from the livecycle forum. You seem to know a lot.

I am making an Accessible Form in LC, if you are familiar with WCAG 2.0, I want to know if expandable fields are considered accessible.

Also, as you know, once a form is designed in LC, it can't be edited in Acro. As well with any WCAG tester I have tried, they fail all LC pdf's.

Do you know of a tool that will check a LC form for wcag 2.0 compliance?

Thanks

Murr