Acrobat Tutorial

Adding a form field using the Forms toolbar

Before LiveCycle Designer, there was the Forms toolbar in Adobe® Acrobat®. This is how form fields have been added to PDF pages since Acrobat 4.

The tools in this toolbar let you create form fields, move them around the page, and otherwise do the tasks essential to creating a form. The Forms tools presume that the labels and other artwork already exist on the PDF page. You use the tools to lay form fields on top of the artwork.

We'll look at the basic steps involved in creating a form field. These are all you need for the most common fields: check boxes and text fields.

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 add a form field using the Forms toolbar:

1. With your PDF file open, in the Forms toolbar, click the type of form field you want to add. The mouse pointer turns into a crosshairs.
2. Drag out a rectangle corresponding to the new form field's position (Figure 1).

    

   

   Figure 1: As you drag out your form field, it appears as a red rectangle with handles.

   The Field Properties dialog box opens (Figure 2). This dialog box has tabs that differ for the different form field types, although the General, Appearance, and Actions tabs are always present.

    

   

   Figure 2: The Field Properties dialog box (here for a check box) lets you specify the appearance and other properties of a form field.

   For a basic form field, as we're constructing here, you can ignore most of the controls; the default values are fine. We'll look at the controls you'll most frequently want to change for a simple check box or text field.
3. Click the Appearance tab (Figure 2).
4. Choose a Border Color and a Fill Color, if you want one of them. You'll probably want to set these to None; remember that you're laying these fields over existing artwork.
5. Choose a font and size for the text in your field. For text fields, you may choose any font on your system and any size you wish. A size of "Auto" uses the largest font size that lets the text fit vertically in the text field. You can't choose a font or a size for a check box; these are dictated by the needs of the field.
6. Click OK to finish your form field definition. Your form field is still visible on the document page as a red rectangle with handles (Figure 1).
7. Reposition and resize the form field to make it match the page's artwork.
8. Click the Acrobat Hand tool (or any other tool) to finish your field definition. The form field is now in place on the page (Figure 4).

    

   

   Figure 4: When you return to the Acrobat Hand tool, your form field is in place and functioning on the page.

Where to go from here

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

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

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