Using the infomation from a Spreadsheet

[Bill Guy]

I am finding no answers to this on any other forums so hopefully here will be the place.

I created a three page form that our clients have to fill out and collected it all into a spreadsheet. The problem is using this information for different departments. Each department only need just a bit of information from the spreadsheet so I have tried to create worksheets which connects to the spread sheet and can be printed out or just viewed on the screen.

I use Live Cycle creator and the Datacollection but this only makes one sheet of the top row of information. I want a page for each one and that is the brick wall I am hitting.

I can do a mail merge in Word but this has format problems. Best of possible worlds would be a work sheet in Acrobat connecting to the info.

Does anyone have an answer or can point me in the right direction.

[Bill Guy]

From just the number of views from this post and the same post on other forums like Adobe there is a very strong interest in this topic but very little information. From working with Adobe Acrobat for the last year in a real office workplace I may still feel that Acrobat is a strong tool but lacks the user friendly function for the users.

While it may be powerful with the use of Java Script most office workers (the real users of the program) do not have the background of computer programming. Plus those who work in large offices like a university who has ever contacted the IT department are lucky to get them to fix problems on the server let alone come up with code for simple things like email buttons or making a form function better.

If Adobe is planning to market to the office side they should at least listen more to the end users and set up section where a function could be requested and code written for download. Plus more attention should be paid for how the program is used in relation to other office programs to help with workflow, not slow it down.

[Lukas Engqvist]

It is allways tough designing something powerfull and foolproof.

I think it is possible to do what you want to do. working around it.
Masking 3 versions of the same form but hiding different parts of the form.

Make one form that includes all. Edit the form to hide the fields that are not needed for each of the departments. This meand that the same data will appear different depending on which form that skins the data.

Alternativeley if you almost got the mail merge working in word (except for formating) look at the data-merge feature in In-Design.

[Bill Guy]

In Design Data Merge. That was something I did not think of. Thanks