PDF Forms with Acrobat 8
Published by Mike Nolan on March 22nd, 2007 in Rants, Web.So I’ve had a bit of a ‘mare with Acrobat 8 recently. The plan was to collect data via an online form but to allow it to be viewable on the original form layout by merging it with a PDF file. I investigated various solutions, mostly commercial products which allowed you to programatically manipulate PDF files until I found this very cool PHP script. It basically creates FDF or XFDF files which can be loaded into a PDF form.
I tried it out a couple of months back before getting side tracked by the Edge Hill Hi site but came back to the code recently. In order for the form data to merge back into the PDF you need to create matching form fields in the PDF and there comes the first problem. At work I have a copy of Acrobat writer but it wasn’t the full version - you could create PDFs not not add forms to them. Rubish. But all is not lost - just in time we got an upgrade to the all-singing, all-dancing Adobe Acrobat 8 Professional! So earlier this week I set about trying to load the FDF (or XFDF) files into my newly created PDF forms.
Could I get it to work? Could I heck! The FDF seemed to be valid, the PDF was valid, the forms seemed fine but try as I might every time I loaded the FDF the PDF would appear with no data in. I tried taking it back to basics and attempting to load the FDF into the PDF while in Acrobat rather than the browser and strangely the import data dialog didn’t have FDF or XFDF listed! After much digging I found a couple of references to why this might be.
It seems that FDF and XFDF are now “old” technology. Forms created with LiveCycle Designer - part of Acrobat Professional - won’t load (X)FDF files. This is anoying for two reasons. Firstly, LiveCycle is actually pretty cool - it automatically detected all my fields when converting from a Word document making creating a form a 5 minute job. Secondly, and considerably more dumb is they’re trying to force users to buy more software! To achieve the same effect as loading an FDF into a PDF you either need:
- Adobe Reader Extensions which costs a lot of money
- Forms Server which costs a lot of money
This is really stupid but kind of what I’d expect from Adobe. The solution is to not use LiveCycle and instead painfully create your form fields manually (which is still a lot easier than the last time I had to do this with Acrobat 4). Anyway, just thought I’d rant about this in case it helps anyone else who’s searching for the solution.
March 26th, 2007 at 2:41 am
Yes, I am trying to do the same thing and have had no such luck finding a solution. Adobe used to support FDF data, then abandoned it for XFDF, and now you’re saying that Acrobat 8 is not (fully) compatible / does not support XFDF. This is crazy.
Anyhow, I would like to see your example, if you have one online. I am trying to get the following workflow on my Web site:
1. HTML form (so users don’t have to Acrobat installed, etc) for users to fill out
2. Some HTML data is used to fill in PDF template which will be emailed to person filling out form. The PDF form is actually a Rental Contract. PDF is a prettier format than ugly HTML form data. So, this is why I’m using PDF.
3. HTML form data comes to us as it already does.
So, are you saying that I should create my PDF form in any version of Acrobat less than 8?
Thanks!
Eric Pollitt
Dust Control Technologies
http://www.dustboss.com/
March 26th, 2007 at 8:31 am
You can use Acrobat 8, but you can’t use LiveCycle which came with it and is much easier to use to create forms. Unfortunately I don’t have a publicly available version of the site but the flow is similar to yours except that the FDF/XFDF goes to the person who is assigned to deal with the particular form they filled in. Loading of the FDF is a little sporadic depending on the machine setup but it works for a fresh install of Acrobat 8 Reader with IE6.
For you, depending on how complex the form is it might be easier to recreate the form creation programatically. If you’ve got a budget then Prince XML can convert HTML to PDF with very very good CSS support.
April 18th, 2007 at 11:01 pm
Hi
At work I have adobe acrobat 8 pro, been using livecycle to build the forms we require, for example, I have a submit button on the Form1 and I can receive the XML data by email, then import this xml file into Form2, both Form1 and Form2 have some matching fields so this is quite striaght forward, but what I want to do is host form2 online and automate the importing of the data.
My question is; Is this possible and how do I go about it?
Kind regards
James
April 19th, 2007 at 9:18 am
I don’t believe that’s possible without extra software using LiveCycle forms. I use the standard Acrobat Pro built forms and load up FDF or XFDF into an online hosted version of the form and it works a treat.
October 11th, 2007 at 12:30 pm
I had no problem with the Koivi script except I can’t get checkboxes to work. Text fields work great. I just collect data via HTML forms (which can easily be made prettier that pdf forms with css), create the FDF file via PHP and voila, it all works great…except those danged checkboxes. Still working on those.
June 25th, 2008 at 1:26 am
that’s no good information for me
now i have to rebuild about 20 pdfs, i build one week before using livecycle.
bad adobe!
August 20th, 2008 at 3:59 pm
Just FYI … LiveCycle forms don’t support XFDF, but they do support standard XML. You can create a form that reads in an XML data set with just a few clicks…the samples that ship with Acrobat show how to do this.
August 28th, 2008 at 8:49 pm
Im having a problem, I created some forms succesfully but when I send them out and the reply back (thtough the send thru email button) to me I don’t get the form filled out instead I just get an XML file, does this mean I have to manually log all the answers from the XML file?