Acrobat User Community Forums

Hi cronan,

You don't say what version of Acrobat you used to create the PDF and there are different routes you can take based on what Acrobat product you are working with.

If you have Acrobat 7 Professional you can use the form field tools on the Advanced Editing toolbar to add fields to the PDF.  If end users will be filling in the form with the free Adobe Reader this option does not allow them to save a copy of the filled in form.  They will be able to fill and print a hard copy only- so this means they must complete filling the form in one session- if they close the form they lose the info they have already typed into the form.

Another option is to use Tools -> Typewriter -> Enable Typewriter Tool in Adobe Reader.  With this option, the end user can use the typewriter tool in Adobe Reader and they can save a copy of the filled form to their computer.  A caveat with the typewriter tool is  exact placement of the text on the form is not that easy.  Typewriter enabled forms opened in Reader display a message to the user on how to use the tool to fill out the form.

If you have Acrobat 8 Professional you can use a new feature called Form Field Recognition to add fields to the form.  This new feature is discussed in two articles here at AUC-
http://www.acrobatusers.com/articles/20 … /index.php

http://www.acrobatusers.com/tutorials/2 … cognition/

Form Field recognition is by no means perfect and you may still have some fields to add or tweak manually with the form tools, but it is a great new addition to Acrobat 8.

In addition, if you have Acrobat 8 Pro you can Enable the form so Reader users can fill and save the form, obviating the need to fill it out in one session.  An article on using the new Rights Enabling features is at-
http://www.acrobatusers.com/articles/20 … /index.php

Finally, if you are using Acrobat Standard there are no tools available for adding fields to the PDF or doing any of the above options.

Hope that helps,

Dimitri
WindJack Solutions
www.windjack.com