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Program submit button to electronically go to Excel file

Forum Index > Forms: Acrobat > Program submit button to electronically go to Excel file
2008-11-24 09:17:07
Justjoane
Registered: Nov 24 2008
Posts: 10

Is there a program or script that will do this?

I've already completed a pdf form on Acrobat 8 with a submit button that works. I want to eliminate the steps requiring admin to change the fdf file to csv and then send to excel. When the submit button is clicked, I want it to end up in an excel file.

The user will be submitting the form from an Adobe Reader. The button is currently set as mailto.

My Product Information:
Acrobat Pro 8.0, Macintosh
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2008-11-24 10:02:07
#1
thomp
Expert
Registered: Feb 15 2006
Posts: 4411
It's a long path from user submit to an excel file any way you cut it. You can send the data in formats other than FDF, but the fact is that they come into your email client where they have to be saved to the local disk and then converted to something else.

There are several ways you can do this. Acrobat 8 Pro has a couple of built-in tools for collecting data. One of them is the "Distribute Form" functionality which helps for collecting the incoming emails attachments.

Another built in tool is the "Merge Data into a Spreadsheet" tool, which is probably more of what you are looking for. It's on the "Forms -> Manage Form Data -> Merge Data into a Spreadsheet..." menu item. It'll take any PDF data format as input and output a spread sheet format.But there is another option as well. If you are ambitious enough you could write a application, or a script for your email client, that automatically collects the returned data as it comes in and merges it into a spread sheet. Adobe gives away a free SDK for handling FDF data called the FDFToolkit. This option is a lot of upfront work, but it would mean that you no longer have to do any manual work to collect and reformat the incoming data.

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]

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

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