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Adobe Acrobat 8 Professional can be used, among many other things, for creating and distributing interactive forms and keeping track of peoples' responses as they are sent back to the form's originator. The PDF format is a great choice for forms since it will allow the user to see the form exactly as it was created. Web forms, by contrast, can vary depending on the operating system and browser software being used. One also has a wider variety of options when it comes to distributing PDF forms: for example, email, CD or DVD. Email, in particular offers a very direct distribution channel. The ability to create forms has long been a feature of Adobe Acrobat. However, Acrobat 8 Professional takes form creation to a new level in terms of ease and sophistication. Acrobat has traditionally been a "magpie" application, relying on other applications to create all of its content. Now, however, forms can be created in Acrobat based on a wide variety of pre-created templates: invoices, timesheet, expenses etc. As with previous versions of Acrobat, forms created in other packages can be used as the starting point for an Acrobat form. Acrobat 8 Professional will even automatically recognise the form layout and generate form fields automatically. You can also use a printed form as the basis for an interactive PDF form. Just choose the Scan From Paper option when creating your new form. After you have created the basic form and perhaps had Acrobat automatically generate your text fields, you can add all the usual form controls, such as check-boxes, radio buttons and combo boxes. Then, to complete the form, you can add a submit button. Traditionally, only a full version of Acrobat would allow you to fill out a PDF form and then save the form data to disk. With Acrobat 8 professional, if you click on the "Advanced" menu and choose "Enable Usage Rights in Acrobat Reader", people filling out your form with Acrobat Reader will be able to save their form data and email it back to you. Acrobat 8 Professional will allow you to distribute the form to a number of recipients via email. This of requires that you have an email client, such as Microsoft Outlook set up on your machine. Returned forms are saved in a special Acrobat file called a dataset. When users complete the form and email it back to you, you simply double-click on the attached form. Acrobat opens a special window marked " Add Completed Form to Data Set". To complete your project, after you have received back all the forms you distributed, you simply open the Acrobat dataset and click on the export button to save it as a .csv file. You can then import this file into Microsoft Excel or Access for storage and/or analysis.
Article Source: http://www.associatedigest.com
The writer of this article is a developer and trainer with Macresource Computer Solutions, a UK IT training company offering Adobe Acrobat Classes in London and throughout the UK.
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