Submitting a PDF Form

[KatieMac]

Ok here we go! I recently updated my companies New Account Application form that customers need to fill out in order to get an account with my company. I created a fillable PDF form using Acrobat and Lifecycle. The form is perfect and works great except for in order for people to send the filled form back to me after clicking submit they must attach it to an e-mail. Is there any other way for them to submit the form back to me without having to save it and then attach it to an e-mail? In other words is it possible for them to just be able to push submit and be done?

[Bill Guy]

Once you have the form done in Livecycle you can go to Distribute Forms which turns it into the type of form you can import directly to a spread sheet.

This is found as an icon on Livecycle or under Forms in Acrobat. It will create two new PDF forms. One with a file name with pub in it and one with data. Put these into a folder separate from the master PDF form. (Just makes them easier to find and send out). You will be sending out the pub (short for pubucation) to new clients (or placed on server for web access) and you can put a submit button on it right from Livecycle. Then they can use Reader 7,8, or 9 to fill it out and submit it back to you which is done by email.

When they come back you double click on it and it imports into the data PDF file where you can read and print out each PDF or export the info into a spread sheet.

(Some Quick Notes from using these for two months) Be sure to put on the form that using Adobe Reader is best and not third party PDF readers. These programs will re write the PDF so that it can not be imported. Also tell them not to redo the filename.

Tell them to submit first then make a copy for their records. This can be a hard copy print or just a saved file. But tell them to submit first. That way they won't be renaming the file or forgetting to send it to you.

Also go back over the PDF to make sure your data names are clear for the spreadsheet. Give them column names that make sense since the default will be useful names like Text1, Text2 and the like.

[KatieMac]

Everything went smoothly when I tested it except for when I opened up the form that I got back. When I double clicked on the file it opened up as an xml file and now I don't know what to do?

[Bill Guy]

Couple of questions

First: Did you send out the pub form to be filled out? When I was doing this I would sometimes send out the wrong form.

Did you test it with Adobe Reader and not Acrobat? By default when you click on the pub form it opens in Acrobat (after all it is the big dog on the computer. Why wouldn't want to open it here?) If open and saved in Acrobat it can change the form making it come back as just a xml file but there is a work around if a client did this and you don't redo everything.

It is good to do the testing in Reader for a couple of reasons. First and formost this is the software you are asking your clients to use. Second it cuts down on problems of overwriting the file.

Now for the workaround of xml forms return. As I said earlier some of our clients redid the forms in third party PDF readers. For those that did this and sent it back to us some were in xml. To import the info save the file to your desktop and open the data file. There you can import a pdf in xml. Double check the form to make sure all the info did come across and if not just send a email to the client for the missing info. Much better customer service than telling to do it all again the right way.

[KatieMac]

Thank you so much for your help I finally got it to work! THANK YOU THANK YOU THANK YOU!