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Acrobat 6.0 - please help me populate a form from a recordsource

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2009-10-29 17:17:05
DaveWP
Registered: Oct 29 2009
Posts: 4
Answered

I'm browsing these forums, and have seen a lot of information about something called LiveCycle, and many people referring to acrobat 8.0

Is there a built in function to scan across my xml source to populate my pdf form? I created a query against my database and aliased the queried fields to match the field names in my pdf form. Then exported that query to xml, only the data.

I clicked Advanced > Forms > Import Forms Data...

and connected to the xml source....

and then I was envisioning a form with populated data that I could navigate with a scroll bar or have some way to isolate 1 record at a time, but I can't seem to find any documentation about doing this without LiveCycle.

Can anyone help an amateur who gets denied by his IT department?

My Product Information:
Acrobat Pro 6.0.6, Windows
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2009-10-30 11:10:33
#1
thomp
Expert
Registered: Feb 15 2006
Posts: 4411
Yes, you can populate a PDF form from a Database or an XML file. And you can use Acrobat 6 to do it, but it does require scripting. If the database is local I'd suggest connecting to it directly with the ADBC object. Look it up in the Acrobat JavaScript Reference and there are several articles scattered across the internet on scripting this object.

Thom Parker
The source for PDF Scripting Info
[url=http://www.pdfScripting.com]pdfscripting.com[/url]

The Acrobat JavaScript Reference, Use it Early and Often
[url=http://www.adobe.com/devnet/acrobat/javascript.php]http://www.adobe.com/devnet/acrobat/javascript.php[/url]

Then most important JavaScript Development tool in Acrobat
[url=http://www.pdfscripting.com/public/34.cfm#JSIntro][b]The Console Window (Video tutorial)[/b][/url]
[url=http://www.acrobatusers.com/tutorials/2006/javascript_console][b]The Console Window(article)[/b][/url]

Thom Parker
The source for PDF Scripting Info
www.pdfscripting.com
Very Important - How to Debug Your Script

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2009-10-30 11:31:43
#2
DaveWP
Registered: Oct 29 2009
Posts: 4
Thanks Thom. I don't have much experience with these kinds of things. I thought exporting my query in to a data xml file would be a work-around for not being able to hook up my pdf directly to a database, but I will look in to this ADBC object functionality.

As far as Javascript, I'm a total dummy and thought it had to do with coffee until I got to these forums. I'll see to finding a cut/paste script if I can find one, and I'm sure it will just take some research.

Again, thanks for your input.
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2011-05-22 14:11:55
#3
sdbrhino
Registered: May 22 2011
Posts: 1
I have a exel spreadsheet of data ie first and last name, address, phone numbers etc. I want to populate a PDF doc form with the data and print forms filed out with the above data
How do I do that?
thanx
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2011-05-26 00:18:45
#4
try67
Expert
Registered: Oct 30 2008
Posts: 2398
You can export the Excel data to a CSV, and if the names of the columns match the names of the fields, import it into a PDF. But if you want a new copy for each record in the CSV file, you will need a custom-made script.

- AcrobatUsers Community Expert - Contact me personally at try6767 [at] gmail [dot] com
Check out my custom-made scripts website: http://try67.blogspot.com

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