import pdf into designer 7

[Former Community Member]

Hello,



New to all of this so some patience please.



When I import my pdf into designer (to make form fillable) it removes all annotations (needed) and table formatting and shading (needed).



I understand that part of the problem is that I am trying to edit a pdf but this is necessary as it is a legal document and must retain the original layour / formatting.



can anyone PLEASE tell me why this happens, how to stop / get around it and if there is an easier way to do this?



Desperate.

[Former Community Member]

If I understand you correctly you are trying to import an Acrobat form to Designer.

Designer is not intended to edit the old pdf forms.

Designer is not working in the same manner as the old Acrobat forms.

You have to start almoust from the beginning

/Ulf

[Former Community Member]

While I agree that sometimes it may be easier to start over than to import an existing MS Word/PDF file, there does exist a New Form Assistant that allows you to specify PDF file import tolerances in order to achieve the best result. You may have to try this a few times in order to get the best result for your particular need.



From the Help:

When you select the PDF file to import, the New Form Assistant appears. The New Form Assistant guides you through a series of steps where you choose which PDF file to import, how text and images will be imported, and how the form will be distributed and returned. If you prefer, you have the option of disabling the New Form Assistant.



If you are not satisfied with the initial conversion, you might want to experiment with different combinations of options to achieve the best results.



While Designer may not be intended to "edit" native Acrobat Pro PDF forms, they can still be used as a starting point to make your PDF fillable.

[Former Community Member]

"Designer is not intended to edit the old pdf forms."



Why would they distribute it with Acrobat 7.0 then? If a product comes from Adobe you'd expect it to be compatible with pdf's.



We have hundreds of pdf forms to which we would like to add the functionality found in Designer. They provide a tool to import them, but it barely works. I have pdfs that were developed on my pc. When I try to import them using my pc, Designer says it can't find the fonts. What I end up with is a Designer document were all the original formatting has been lost. Hopefully, a third-party product will step up and provide a tool to make Designer useful to us.

[Former Community Member]

E,



Adobe and most of the regulars on these forums are of the belief that pdf files are complete printed documents, not to be edited. Nevermind the fact that editors such as Illustrator use pdf for their base file structure. The general response to any question involving editing a pdf is "you shouldn't be trying to edit the pdf, go back to the original file and edit it in whatever program you created it in"



That said, I hope Designer continues to develop and grow, ideally evolving into something very similar to InDesign CS in the way tools and palettes are used.



tye

[Former Community Member]

If pdf files are complete printed documents, then Adobe could have stopped releasing products once Reader was out.



I just think that if they're going to add features (that they apparently don't really want us to use?) to a product , it would be nice if they worked. I bought this product because of their claims that it was the perfect tool to simplify the editing of pdf forms.

[Former Community Member]

E,



Here is the link to adobe livecycle Designer http://www.adobe.com/products/server/adobedesigner/main.html



I 've read about the product but I can not find where they said it is a "perfect tool to simplify the editing of pdf forms".

[Former Community Member]

Please folks, let's not confuse Acrobat Professional PDF DOCUMENTS with Adobe LiveCycle Designer FORMS. From the Adobe website:



"Adobe® Acrobat® 7.0 Professional software is the advanced way to create, control, and deliver more secure, high-quality Adobe PDF documents. Assemble electronic or paper files even Web sites, engineering drawings, and e-mail into reliable PDF documents that are easy to share with others using free Adobe Reader® 7.0 software."



and



"Adobe® LiveCycle Designer software enables the creation of forms that combine high-fidelity presentation with XML data handling. The easy-to-use graphical interface of Adobe LiveCycle Designer enables users to quickly design forms, maintain form templates, define a form's business logic, make changes, and preview forms before they are deployed as Adobe PDF files or HTML documents."



I've noticed a common thread in this forum where people are confusing the intent of these two products. Granted, I don't think Adobe marketing has done a very good job helping explain the difference nor documenting the proper use of Designer.

[Former Community Member]

I'm really new to this, any help you can give me will be greatly appreciated. I haved the 7.0 Professional Trial version and my days are running out. I want to import a current PDF form into Designer and create a fillable form from the PDF document. My question is: Do I need to insert text fields and/or numeric fields into each one of the current existing PDF's fields, such as name, SSN, address, etc.? Also the tabbing issue I just don't get. Seems to me when you do what Adobe tells you to do with the tabbing it just doesn't work that way. 1 becomes 2, 2 becomes 3, etc.



Please help!

[Former Community Member]

I know this is an old post but I too have just been given the assignment of converting hundreds of court forms (normally printed for use) into electronic documents that users could then access, fill out and then print. The fillable electronic forms could be accesses via the web and filled out before hand, thus saving the Court time and somewhat reducing our printing costs.



Unfortunately as I have poured through forum topics, there is are distinctions about Adobe, Adobe Reader, Adobe Professional, etc..., and the forum people aren't afraid to point this out when a newbie makes an error in their inquiry.



I believe I, like Micheal originally, need an application to simply allow for the inclusion of fillable fields into an already existing document(form) that we can then save as a fillable PDF file.



So far neither Liquid Office, nor our newly upgrade Adobe 7.0 professional with LiveCycles Design really do this well. From what I can gleen is that these products are designed to function with the data (or values) at a level far beyond the simple task we are trying to accomplish.



Has anybody else had similar experiences? If so, how were they resolved?



Thank you, Ken

[Former Community Member]

Ken, contact me offlist. s.vanslyck@spamcop.net

[Former Community Member]

I have Adobe Acrobat Prof 7. I too am trying to take an existing form that was published as pdf and convert it so that it has fillable lines. I have tried help in InDesign etc. So far no luck. HELP! Idea seems so simple....

Thanks

Carol N.

[Former Community Member]

Carol N, I have been in the process of converting paper Court Forms to electronic fillable forms. This has also been extended to include retro fitting electronic forms our printers have created (and kept as PDFs) during their printing process. I hope I understand your question.



If you are starting with a file (ANYFILE.pdf), normally when you open it from the folder it's kept in, it will open using the ADOBE READER application. On one of the tool bars, there is an ICON that looks like two documents on top of each other and when your pointer hovers over it it indicates, "Form Tasks". when you click on this button, a drop-down menu will appear. The top three options are what you are interested in using. the top one is, "Make form fillable in designer..." and the second is, "Edit fillable form..." and the third is, "Create new form..." Selecting any of these will execute ADOBE DESIGNER.



If the document you are viewing using the reader is the document you want to use, and has no fillable fields, select the top option. If the document you are viewing using the reader is the is the document you want to use and already has fillable fields, select the second option. Once a selection has been made, you will go through a series of notifications and menus regarding this process. read through them to determine which is most appropriate for what you need. When completed ADOBE DESIGNER will open with your document in an editable format ready for you to add whatever fields you require.



You could also get to this point by starting the ADOBE DESIGNER application and opting to OPEN the PDF you need (just as you would from MS WORD). Another is by right clicking on the file as opposed to double clicking on it. This allows you the choice of what application to use when opening the file (.pdf) by selecting the option, "OPEN WITH..."



Now that you have the document open in ADOBE DESIGNER, there are a whole number of other issues you may have as to the fillable objects you use.



I hope this was helpful. If not could you be more specific.

Ken K

[Former Community Member]

Thanks Ken

Problem - everytime I try to add the fillable field, I get "text field" to the left of the field in put box and it covers up the original text (ie: Name, address etc). So original text is not readable. I just need to be able to type in that line for submission or printing - not for database collection.

Thanks

Carol N.

[Former Community Member]

Carol, That is what we are using the software for also (some in these forums would argue that this is not how the software was intended to be used). There a few things of importance I have learned about TEXT FIELD objects:



1. The one TEXT FIELD object consists of 2 parts; a caption, and a value (the characters that will be typed into the field).



2. Each part, and thereby the object, has defaults



3. Each part can be edited/formatted individually or together.



4. The object itself can be formatted.



5. the ability to format is done through "palettes"



6. Palattes can be accessed as menu items by "RIGHT CLICK" of the mouse while your pointer is hovering over the object.



What you have sounds like to me is; the object of a TEXT FIELD defaults to having a caption, and the default caption for it is "text field". It also defaults to the left side of the field. The caption can be edited and repositioned or even turned off.

This is located in the "LAYOUT" palette towards the bottom.



Ken K

[Former Community Member]

Ken - THANK YOU THANK YOU THANK YOU!!!! Carol N.

[Former Community Member]

I'm having problems with the graphical end of Designer - i can create a form in designer, save it as a PDF, re-open it in illustrator and add nice vector graphics and have the saved form still work (just don't play with the form objects).



This works pretty nicely for one page forms - the problem comes when you have a a three or five page form. Illustrator can only open one page at a time. So you do each page and then reassemble the PDF in acrobat pro - NO the ability to insert pages into forms created in designer is disabled and i can't find a way around it - does anyone have any ideas?

[Former Community Member]

It sounds as if the document you are starting with is being viewed using Adobe Reader and then you're selecting to create a fillable form. This must also mean that the document you are starting with has a PDF extension. If this is true I can understand your frustration.



many on these forums will express to you the limitations of PDF. If you're new to these products you may not understand what they're trying to tell you. Basically that you're trying to edit in PDF and that is not what PDF is for -- You should be editing the document in its original format.



If you're like me, and our situations sound similar, you'll be more confused than ever with this statement. Here are some things I have found helpful;



1. when you start with a PDF document, if it wasn't created using Adobe Designer, there is a conversion that takes place. This conversion does some OCR and formatting as best it can, but I've never been able to just simply create an exact copy of the original PDF as fillable without some further massaging. Sometimes that massaging takes more time than re-creating the document in designer from scratch.



2. During the conversion process, there are certain item, objects, groups of characters that are converted to "picture/image objects" in the fillable form. This further complicates matters as pictures aren't really editable. There is an option on the toolbar of Adobe Reader to OCR an image, but this has to be done in Reader before converting to Designer and may not apply in all cases.



3. I've had some success using a printed form of the document and scanning it directly in to the program using the scanner's OCR software. I've also had some success scanning a printed form into Microsoft Word using the OCR and then either converting to PDF OR printing the document to Adobe PDF.



4. You can use Microsoft Word, Excel and Notepad as workarounds. Re-create the forms using these various programs and either convert, print to ADobe PDF, or use Cut & Paste of these programs in conjunctions with Adobe Designer.



These are probably not what you wanted to hear and it may seem like a lot of work, but the more you use it the more efficient you'll be come at the workarounds.



I hope this helps. If you find a better way than these I'd hope would share. Thank You.



Ken