PDF Forms Using Acrobat® and LiveCycle® Designer Bible

Chapter 27. Working with Tables

IN THIS CHAPTER

• Creating static and dynamic tables

• Using XML data with tables

• Adding sections to tables

Back in Chapter 8 we talked about creating tables in Acrobat. Here we are again talking about tables but now we look at tables as they relate to LiveCycle Designer ES. Because we have two chapters devoted to tables, you should get an idea for the level of significance we give to adding tables on forms.

To substantiate our belief that tables are an important part of creating forms, you need only look at Designer and see that the program has a special tool for creating and formatting tables. As a matter of fact, the table editor in Designer is almost on par with the table editors you find in programs like Adobe InDesign and Microsoft Word.

Tables really shine when we create dynamic forms and flow data into a table where we can watch Designer spawn new rows as the data are introduced. In Chapter 8 we talked about static tables in Acrobat and in Chapter 19 we talked about spawning new pages from templates that contain tables. However, the one thing Acrobat cannot do is create a form that dynamically extends a table design to accommodate data, either imported into a form, or by extending a user's need to spawn more rows or columns to add additional data.

The wonderful thing about the dynamic characteristics of an XML form is that the table expansion opportunities you provide to form recipients can be handled by both the Adobe Reader user and the Acrobat user ...