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Hey Community - LTRFTP
At our organization we have many forms in word (not interactive obviously), and are looking to switch over to interactive PDF's where the client fills it out and then pushes e-mail and like magic we got it. These forms are updated rather regularly. When I initially tried converting, I selected use an existing form and brought it in to Adobe that way. However, when I did so, I could not change the text that was initially put in word. Does this mean that I will have to re-create each form in Adobe if I want to be able to adjust the wording of the form? Or is there some other solution? Thanks for your time.
-Brian
Upon request that a form be made interactive I receive a copy of the PDF that is generated from InDesign and I open it in Acrobat and add the form fields and other interactive elements.
When changes or corrections to the form need to be made then the forms guy makes a new PDF and gives it to me. I open the interactive form and simply replace the page(s) that have been changed or corrected. Then I make any field adjustments that need to be made if any. This way I never have to recreate the form every time changes or corrections are made.
Sometimes I will have to replace pages several times before the form is ready to signed off and used.
Since many of your forms are authored in Word you could create a PDF right from the Word document and add the form fields in Acrobat. You could also try out the form field recognition feature in Acrobat 9 to quickly add fields to a PDF form. This feature does exist in Acrobat 8 Professional but I think Acrobat 9 does a better job. It does a fair job at recognizing what might be a form field. Check boxes don't fair so well at times. I like to have more control over my field naming so I don't use this feature but I suppose some people may find it quite useful.
You could even try out Adobe LiveCycle Designer which will allow you to bring in a Word file and be able to edit everything. I haven't tried to bring a Word form in to LiveCycle Designer so I don't know how that would work. I personally think it is more work to bring in Word or PDF forms into LiveCycle Designer. So when I create a form in LiveCycle Designer I do it from scratch because I want a clean and tidy form.
StevenD