PDF Forms Using Acrobat® and LiveCycle® Designer Bible

Chapter 5. Creating Simple Office Forms

IN THIS CHAPTER

• Using Form Editing Mode

• Using the Create or Edit Form wizard

• Adding field objects

• Saving a form

This chapter deals with simple forms—not just a file converted to a PDF document; but rather a fillable form that can be completed by form recipients. In a way, a simple form as we define it here, is one that won't require much work to prepare for deployment.

Acrobat provides you with features that can help you add field objects to forms automatically. Auto field detection can be used on many documents to quickly prepare a form and make it ready for distribution.

In this chapter we cover working in the Form Editing Mode, adding field objects through Acrobat's automation features, tweaking a form, and saving it for optimum performance.

Understanding Form Editing Mode

Prior to Acrobat 9, you used the Forms toolbar in Acrobat Professional to add field objects to a document. The eight form tools found in Acrobat 8 were used to create field objects on a page in the normal Viewer mode.

Acrobat 9 introduced a new user interface called Form Editing Mode. When you create field objects on a page, you enter Form Editing Mode where you can add fields, preview your work, and complete a form. When you're finished with form editing, you return to Viewer mode with the click of a button.

If you're using Acrobat Professional below version 9, you can follow much of what is contained in this chapter. The difference for you is that you need to open the Forms toolbar ...