Send interactive form as pdf

[bobvaz]

Prologue: I am a rookie using acrobat as a development tool.
That said - I have a client who has asked that an interactive employee application form be made available on line; and when completed, sent to the HR manager via email.
I created a form starting in acrobat pro 9 (trial version) which rerouted me to live cycle for creation of the form. At length I created the fields required and added a 'Submit by email' button directed to me (while testing). Saved the form. Tested it on my local host, entereing data, and invoking my email client. However, it only sent xml data, not the pdf form. Contacted the adobe site, explaining issue, and was told to change the submit by email button to just a button and say it has a submit function and check the pdf format. Same test conducted - sent my email a pdf....Put the form on line to test. Does not work - users get the message saying it has an email button only the data will be sent not the form.....Will someone please tell me what I have done wrong....Thanks in advance. Bob

[Bill Guy]

Going back to your original form in Livecycle or Acrobat (at least in Acrobat 8) there is a Distribute forms button. With the PDF open click on this. It will take your form and make a data copy and pub (for publication) copy. You send the pub copy to others and when they fill it out it will come back to you as an attachment to email. When you click on the attachment it will open the data copy and input the info there. This will give you a doc with the original form and the data the users filled out. You can export this info into spreadsheets.

[lkassuba]

If you're not using the Distribute Form feature in A9 (which automatically adds a submit button and Reader-enables your form), then you'll also need to manually Reader-enable your form so recipients with Reader (7.0.5 or greater) can submit your form. This is assuming that you're using client email not web email.

[gaf]

Sounds like you want the person filling in the form to be able to save what they have filled in and send it back to you....its easy now in Acrobat 9 Pro

goto Advanced > Extend Features in Adobe Reader...

(this will basically add a "license" to the document, which doesnt effect anything else, but allows them to save the file with the fields filled in!)

This will open a dialog box, and you simply click "Save Now", create another file and save it. Now this form can be sent to the form filler, they can save it and attach the file and email it back.

[elevatemysoul]

Piggybacking off this thread. I am having a similar problem, with a twist. I have 2 documents: an info brochure, and an application form. The application form is a fillable form that needs to be returned to us. I have tried both of the methods suggested above (the distribute method, as well as just extending usage rights so they can simply fill it in with Reader, save it and e-mail it back as an attachment). Both methods work perfectly if I just open the application form in Reader. But...

What I really want to do is enclose the application form PDF as an attachment inside the info brochure PDF. So, they open the info brochure, read it, go to the attachments panel, open up the application, fill it in and submit it. But somehow, in the process of attaching the application form to the info brochure, it gets screwed up. Using the distribute method, nothing happens when I hit the submit button. Using the usage rights method, the rights get lost when I attach the file. I tried extending the usage rights to the whole info brochure file, but that doesn't affect the attachment. So as it stands, it looks like I will not be able to attach the application form to the info brochure. If anyone knows how to fix this problem, I'd really appreciate the help.

As I side rant, I wonder why Adobe doesn't just automatically allow all forms to be saved in Reader? I can't see why you wouldn't want this.