Full Version of Acrobat to use Forms? 5

[signal49]

Can Acrobat 6 Pro-created forms be filled out and printed with the free reader or do they need the full version? What about older versions of Acrobat and reader?

 

[stryder7of9]

I have struggled with this same issue, and some of the Q&A's here have helped, but I think a summary might help.

The bottom line, in my mind, is this:
- With Adobe Acrobat (Professional version is required, I think) you can create forms (form fields, checkboxes, etc.) on any PDF doc.
- With the free READER, you can view the forms, and you can fill in the form fields, and you can print the forms.
What you CANNOT do with the free Reader is to SAVE the form WITH THE FORM DATA FILLED OUT. If you Save A Copy of the form using Reader, it will save the original form without any of the data filled in.
- You need Acrobat Reader Extensions (many thousands of $$'s) to enable hidden functionality within Reader to be able to SAVE FORM DATA with Reader.
- If you are a programmer, or you hire a programmer, you can program a website to suck the data from a web based PDF form and store it in a database with a 'Submit' button or something similar. This is beyond my area of expertise, and others here clearly understand this, so that's all I'll say about it.

I had to learn all this because I built a business plan around clients being able to use Reader to fill out AND save form data using Reader. It was disappointing when I finally found out that this could not be done, and necessitated a complete re-write of the plan.

 

[teletubby5e]

ouch. so did you end up going with the clients having the form template on their end, and importing xml data from the server side template?

not very scalable solution from adobe if you ask me. it would be for big shops that process thousands of form requests. that is what they should charge the big bucks for. for the smaller outfits like i am working at, there should be the handy dandy option on the submit email button that says "email completed form"

thanks for your reply.

jeff

 

[rickscript]

I have read much of this thread and I can make a suggestion that I think would help. If you are looking for an application that is inexpensive and will do what I think you are trying to do. And, best of all, it doesn't put any more $$ in Adobes coffers. The program is called PDFill and will allow your users to fill out a PDF form, save it and print it and much more. It has a host of great features and is a STEAL at $9.99 (although I think the next version may be hiked all the way to $19.99).. I've used it and I also have the full acrobat 7 and it can do some things that I haven't been able to do on acrobat. The link is here:

http://www.pdfill.com/

I tried out a lot of PDF utilities before this one (and before acrobat 7) and this one was by far the best in my opinion.