Design Center article

Most of the actions you'll take regarding forms in Adobe® Acrobat®—creating, distributing, collecting—are accessible through the aptly named Forms menu.

Requirements

To complete this article, you will need the following software:

Adobe Acrobat 8

• Try
• Buy (Professional)

Prerequisite knowledge:

Basic knowledge of commenting in Acrobat

To create a form template:

1. Choose Forms > Create New Form. Acrobat will display the first panel of the Create a New Form wizard (Figure 1).

    

   

   Figure 1: When you choose Forms > Create New Form, you are presented with a dialog box that lets you specify your starting point in the process.

2. Choose "Select a template," and click Continue. Acrobat displays an informational panel telling you about LiveCycle Designer (Figure 2). You should read this the first couple times, but then make use of the "Do not show again" check box.

    

   

   Figure 2: Acrobat reminds you that you are using LiveCycle Designer. Once you've read this a few dozen times, use the "Do not show again" check box.

3. Click Continue. The next panel of the Create New Form Wizard opens (Figure 3), and asks you to pick a template. Acrobat ships with an awe-inspiring collection of templates for everything from invoices to requests for unpaid leave. There is also a None selection, which drops you directly into LiveCycle Designer with a blank form.

    

   

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   Figure 3: The second step in the wizard is to pick a template.

4. Choose a category and a template within that category. The preview in the dialog box displays the template you choose.
5. Click Next. The next step in the Create New Form wizard opens (Figure 4), which asks for your company name.

    

   

   Figure 4: Acrobat needs to collect some information about your company for incorporation into the template. This includes your company's name and contact information.

6. Type your company's name into the text, field and click Next. The next panel asks for an image file containing your company's logo (Figure 5).

    

   

   Figure 5: You can supply an image file that contains your company logo.

7. Click the Browse button, and choose the TIFF, JPEG, or other image file that contains your logo.
8. Click Next. The next two panels ask for your company's contact information: address, telephone number, email address, and Web address.
9. Supply your company's address, and click Next.
10. Supply your telephone number and email and Web addresses, and click Next. The final panel in the series asks whether your form should include an email button, a print button, or both (Figure 6).

     

    

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    Figure 6: Finally, you specify whether you want an email button, a print button, or both.

11. Choose the "Add an email button" check box, and type your email address into the text box. The email button allows recipients of the form to email their filled-out form to you. They click the Submit by Email button, and Acrobat uses their mail client to send you their responses. You do want an email button; Acrobat's automated distribution and collection of forms depends on it.
12. If you want a print button, choose the "Add a print button" check box. This button, of course, prints the form. The recipient can then send you the printed form by post or by fax.
13. Click Finish. Acrobat thinks for a short while and then shows you your new form in LiveCycle designer (Figure 7).

     

    

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    Figure 7: The LiveCycle Designer has three panes. Clockwise from left, these are the Design pane, the How To pane, and the Library pane.

14. Reposition and resize the form fields by dragging the fields and their handles (Figure 8). You can also edit the field labels as you would any other text.

     

    

    Figure 8: When you create a form field, you can move it and resize it by dragging its border and its handles. You can also edit the label.

15. Choose File > Save to save the form.

Where to go from here

For more information about working with forms in Acrobat 8, check out these other great tutorials:

• Adding a Submit button using the Forms toolbar, by John Deubert
• Adding a form field using the Forms toolbar, by John Deubert

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