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- Create a Form
A tutorial in 3 steps - Create a PDF
from any document - Create Form Fields
using Adobe Acrobat - Conduct a Survey
The do's and dont's...
how to create fillable fields
By preparing your PDF form with fillable fields, your clients will be able to fill out your form using Acrobat Reader (versions 4-7). In this beginner's tutorial you'll get aquainted with Acrobat's form tool box. Additionally, we'll create a simple order form.
The form tools
mouse over images to enlarge
Launch Acrobat Professional and open a PDF document (my_form.pdf if you're coming from the previous tutorial), select Tools->Advanced Editing->Forms and make sure Show Forms Toolbar is checked. You should now see a toolbar containing the following tools:
- The Button Tool - use this tool to create buttons. Buttons can be set to perform (javascript) actions when they're pushed, for instance go to a specific page, clear the form, submit the form, print the form, change view, hide and show form fields and so on. Acrobat Professional offers the very basic actions to be triggered when the button is pushed. If these won't do the job, your only option is to do it yourself using javascript.
- The Checkbox Tool - if you want the user to be able to check (select) zero or more items, this is your tool.
- The Combo Box Tool - a k a "the popup menu tool". This tool is an alternative to the radio button widget (below), and differs in the way that it requires less space.
- The List Box Tool - the combo box' big brother. A list box allows you to a) display more of the choices and b) let the select multiple items (simply check Multiple selection).
radio button or check box
- The Radio Button Tool - A group of radio buttons behave just like check boxes, with two exceptions: a) A radio button allows one choice and one choice only, and b) keep in mind that once you've checked a radio button, there's no "checking back". If none of the radio buttons were checked per default, once you check you can never go back to the unchecked state. In many occasions you actually want a user to be able to select nothing at all. With ordinary check boxes this is no problem - the user simply de-checks every box and he's clear. With radio buttons however, you should provide "nothing" or "0" as an alternative.
- The Text Field Tool - Perhaps the most commonly used tool, as it creates plain text fields in which the user can type his name, address and so on.
- The Digital Signature Field Tool - useless in "public forms" (unless your government has approved on and provided its citizens with digital signatures).