PDF Form Distribution

Unfortunately the Form Distribution tool in Acrobat is fairly narrow in scope. The collection file is meant to be used by the person that sends the form out. You are not meant to be able to setup a distribution for someone else.

The easiest solution is to give the raw form to your client and then walk them the process of setting up a distribution on their system. The reason is that Acrobat has to hook the collection file in to the Form Tracker. You can in fact do a lot of this process manually. You can change the submit email and add the form to the Forms Tracker. You can do a lot more as well. If you know how to access and modify the form distribution parameters in the Document Metadata, and get to the forms tracker through the back-end interface.

But otherwise your stuck with what Acrobat gives you.

I am trying to determine if I absolutely NEED to use the Distribute Form feature in Acrobat Pro (V9) in order to have others Save a filled out form in Acrobat Reader.

I am under the impression that I need only to go to Advanced / Extend Features in Acrobat Reader and once I upress the Save Now button, it will allow any filled out version to be Saved in Adobe Reader.

I appreciate the insight.

- John

Hi John,

I always used to distribute the forms i created, but now use save with extended features and it does allow
saving of the filled forms in Acrobat reader. which is all we needed.

Paul

Thanks, Paul.

I had thought that it would work a little more easily using the extended features (the Distribute feature being so advanced)- but I have been hearing some reports from the field that indicate otherwise (people claiming to NOT be able to Save the completed forms).

The main reason I posted here is because I didn't know if for some reason you needed to FIRST use the extended feature and THEN Distribute the form (which doesn't make sense to me).

I'll be looking to speak directly to users to determine what their issues were with the form in its current state.

Thanks again.

- John

John,

We supply PDFs saved using advanced features and not distributed now to our customers who require forms,
we haven't had any come backs yet.

thanks

Paul,

That's very good to know.

I appreciate your time.

- John

Is there any simple way to distribute a form to a list of 400 emails from an excel spreadsheet without typing each one individually with a semicolon to separate?

The simple way is to buy a PDF mail merge tool, there's nothing built into Acrobat for this, although it would be a very nice feature. You'll find such a tool at www.evermap.com.

This is something that can be done with JavaScript. The main design task is connecting the external data file, in this case an excel file, to an automation script. In fact I've written specialized mail merge scripts a few times.

You'll find a complete mail merge automation script, articles on how to connect an automation script to an external data source and perform a variable data operation (same thing as a mail merge) at www.pdfscripting.com