Acrobat Tutorial

Adding a Submit button using the Forms toolbar

One important field that Macintosh users need to add to their forms is a Submit button that submits the form to an email address. Acrobat needs one of these to be able to automatically distribute and collect forms. Creating the button isn't hard, but it does entail a fair number of steps.

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

Buttons frequently don't have corresponding artwork already on the page. The following steps assume that the page is blank where the button should go.

The following task also assumes your form file is open in Acrobat and the Forms toolbar is visible.

To create a Submit button:

1. Click the Button tool in the Forms toolbar. The mouse pointer turns into a crosshairs.
2. Drag out a rectangle corresponding to where you want the button to go. The Button Properties dialog box opens (Figure 1). You can accept the default values for most of this dialog box's controls, but to make a Submit button, you need to make some specific selections. Any controls I don't mention may be left with their default values.

    

   

   Figure 1: To create a Submit button, set the Border Color to black, the Fill Color to whatever is pretty, and the Line Style to Beveled.

3. In the Appearance tab, set the Border Color to black and the Fill Color to whatever looks nice to you.
4. Set the Line Style pop-up menu to Beveled and set the Font and Font Size to whatever you wish.
5. Click the Options tab. Acrobat displays controls specific to a button's appearance (Figure 2).

    

   

   Figure 2: In the Options pane for your Submit button, set the Behavior to Push, and type Submit into the Label text box.

6. In the Behavior pop-up menu, choose Push and in the Label text box, type the label you want for the button. Submit is a reasonable choice.
7. Click the Actions tab. These controls specify what the button should do (Figure 3).

    

   

   Figure 3: In the Submit button's Actions pane, choose “Submit a form” for the Action, and then click the Add button.

8. In the Select Trigger pop-up menu, choose Mouse Up and in the Select Action popup menu, choose “Submit a form,” then click the Add button. The Submit Form Selection dialog box opens (Figure 4).

    

   

   Figure 4: In the Options for the Submit a Form action, type your email address into the URL text box and choose the “PDF The complete document” radio button.

9. In the "Enter a URL for this link" text box, type the form's return email address preceded by mailto:. Thus, if the return email address is a@b.com, you type mailto:a@b.com.
10. For Export Format, choose the "PDF The complete document" radio button then click OK. Acrobat returns you to the Button Properties dialog box, now showing your “Submit a form” action in the Actions area (Figure 5).

     

    

    Figure 5: When you return to the Button Properties dialog box, "Submit a form" appears as the button's action.

11. Click Close. Acrobat returns you to your document, now showing your button as a red rectangle with handles (Figure 6).

     

    

    Figure 6: Returning to the document page, reposition and resize the button.

12. Reposition and resize the button as you wish by dragging the rectangle and its handles.
13. Click the Acrobat Hand tool (or any other tool) to see your functioning Submit button (Figure 7). Whew! When the user clicks this button, Acrobat emails the form and its data to the address you specified.

     

    

    Figure 7: When you return to the Acrobat Hand tool, your Submit button, fully functional, resides 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 form field using the Forms toolbar, by John Deubert

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