Sending Completed PDF Form via email

To have your form returned as .fdf
Insert this JavaScript code for the Mouse Up button action in the Submit button. Change the email addresses as necessary. For only one receipent, remove the cc addresses but leave the quotes.

if (typeof(app.viewerType)!="undefined")
if(app.viewerType == "Reader")
{
var msg = "You must use Adobe Reader 8.0 to send this form. You can download Adobe Reader 8 at: [url=http://www.adobe.com/products/acrobat/readstep2.php";]http://www.adobe.com/products/acrobat/readstep2.php";[/url]
app.alert(msg);
}
else
{
this.mailForm(true, "yourEmailAddress [at] yourCompany [dot] com", "ccEmailAddress [at] yourCompany [dot] com", "other_cc_emailAddress [at] yourCompany [dot] com",
"Your Form Title");
}

Hi. I have a question for pddesigner. Can one of the e-mail addresses in the above script be an e-mail address that was entered into one of the fields on the form. I would like the person filling out the form to get a copy e-mailed back to them, since they are not able to save a copy of the filled out form for themself. Thanks!

Orange

I've assume you've already tested the javascript.

Check list:
Enable Adobe Reader Usage Rights.
1. Choose, Advanced > Enable User Rights In Adobe ReaderChange the var msg from Adobe Reader 8 to Adobe Reader 9

Add this Javascript to a Document action:

if (app.viewerVersion < 9) {
app.alert("You must have Acrobat Reader 9.0 to use this form.")
this.closeDoc(true)
}

Note: Abobe Reader 9 allows local save on the users hard drive.

As a last resort, you could write an Adobe Reader Plug-In using the Acrobat SDK or add a save menu button on the tool bar. You can download the SDK from Adobe.

I am sorry pddesigner... I have created this Form that we want to email to clients.... then have them fill it out and email back to us. it would be nice to have the data transferred to a spreed sheet.. but not important...

I am at a loss as to where to put this javascript you mentioned... I see no place in my submit button to do so.

here is what I see...

[img]http://www.giveralliance.com/images/golf.png[/img]

Actually about 10 mins after posting this I started clicking things and actually found where the java script was to go... and get this... IT WORKED!!!

now I need to redesign it for web use rather than press quality... the two page file was over 7 meg in size.

Maybe I'm not understanding the discussion correctly, but is there a way to have a PDF form on the server that:

1. you don't send to specific email addresses
2. the end user fills out the PDF form, and
2. submits to your email address

In other words, I'm not emailing the form/distributing to specific email addresses, but I want the form submissions sent to a specific email address.

I am very interested in this answer as well. I have a form that will go on our website. It is to be filled out and then emailed to someone as the PDF form with responses. The person getting the emailed form does not have acrobat professional - only the reader. Is this possible?

I have Acrobat 8 Professional and used it to create the form with a submit button - but the person collecting (getting the emails) the registrations does not. He only has the free reader.

Bump, anyone?

Hi redcrew and samh1380,

I'll address redcrew first:

1. I assume you mean "Distribution" when you don't send to specific e-mail addresses. Well then, yes, you can just upload the PDF file to your server and any user would be able to download it and submit it.

2. The user will fill out the form, press the submit button, and it will prompt them with how they would like to submit the form, using their local e-mail program, or an online mail client (i.e. Yahoo Mail, Hotmail, Google Mail, etc...).

The submission will be sent to the e-mail address you set in the form to receive responses. This is assuming you understand how to set up a form using form fields. If you do not know how to do that, please reply, and we'll guide you with the basics.

Samh1380,
Yes, it's possible with only the free reader. The best method to receive simple form submissions is the FDF format, which is a small file compared to attaching the PDF to the email, and will fill out the form fields automatically, upon opening the PDF set in the /F key.

nixopax - thanks for the reply, but what do you mean by opening the PDF set in the /F key?

The /F Key is the reference to the PDF document the Form Data is bound to. To give you an example:

This is a PDF with a form. The fields are blank. It's the PDF set in the /F key of our FDF
http://connect.pdfpictures.com/testlogin.pdf

This is an FDF with the form values.
http://connect.pdfpictures.com/testlogin.fdf

Save both files to the same folder. Now, when you open this FDF, it's going to redirect you to the PDF because the /F key value is testlogin.pdf, and it has a field value for the two fields I've placed in the document. Clicking OK will allow you to experience what an FDF is.

Here is what the FDF code looks like. As a point of illustration, I exported the FDF allowing the password field to be saved in the FDF, by default, it's not enabled.


Edit: The main point of the FDF file vs the PDF when collecting information is filesize. The PDF example I provided is 167kb, and the FDF is only 1 kb! Considering we only want the form information anyway, there is no need to waste bandwidth and time sending PDF files back and forth with the data embedded in it when in most situations, it's enough to just export the FDF, or submit the form to an e-mail address using the FDF option. As long as the person collecting the information has the original PDF, they can load the FDF into it. Let's take the example above, and you receive the FDF in an e-mail. Well, the FDF will point to testlogin.pdf in your e-mail. It's not going to find the PDF file, so it asks you to point it in the right direction. A browse dialog will popup and you find the PDF file on your computer and it loads it happily.

Thanks nixopax.

I know how to set up the form fields, but what I don't understand are the steps to set up the form to be submitted to a specific email address.

I own two Adobe Acrobat 9 books. On page 223 of John Deubert's book "Visual Quickstart Guide Adobe Acrobat 9", he explains three ways to distribute the form: email, Acrobat.com and your own server. In the "your own server" section he says "we will not be discussing this option in this book; Acrobat.com is free and easy, and a much better way to distribute forms".

In Donna Baker's "Adobe Acrobat 9 How-Tos: 125 Essential Techniques, she discusses distributing the form by email or on Acrobat.com or an intranet (page 249-252), but I could not find any information on how to distribute the form on a public server.

So, do I assume I should just add a submit button to the PDF form, based on the instructions in the Acrobat 9 help file (page 207 of the Acrobat 9 PDF help file)?

Dear Nixopax, I feel even more ignorant than before. I've used acrobat for years creating forms that were returned to me and this was never an issue. Now, I'm getting more and more lost. I apologize if my questions are ignorant. I am so appreciative you are trying to answer and help me.

1. Will the person getting the email .fdf form be able to merge the files with the free reader? They do not have Acrobat 8 professional like I do. And I do NOT want to have to be the middle person in this process.

2. If I email him the .pdf form and have him save to his computer, will it work? Or by "original" do you mean he has to have the file created on his machine?

3. I created the form in Designer so do I save it as .fdf in Designer (and how do I do this), or save and then open in Acrobat Pro and do it there? How do I do this?

One of the forms is located - it is set up to return .xml form - which isn't working.

http://immanuelaltamont.org/pdf/VBSRegistrationForm3.pdf

I do not know why this is becoming my personal war with forms, but it has become so. Again, thank you for your guidance and assistance.

Hi Samh1380,

I've tried out the file you provided. You made the file in LiveCycle Designer, which uses XML instead of FDF/XFDF to submit forms. They're completely different form types. LC Designer uses XFA(XML Forms Architecture), while Acrobat uses the older AcroForms FDF and XFDF. Unfortunately, XML has no native link to a PDF file like FDF and XFDF. I haven't had any luck importing the XML into the Reader version by opening the file or dragging and dropping it on the opened PDF file, which you can do with FDF/XFDF. If you were to create the exact same form in Acrobat instead of LiveCycle, you would be able to do it natively.

1. Unfortunately, the way you've made the form right now, Reader alone wouldn't be able to import.

2. Original simply means a PDF with the form fields that you need. It doesn't even need to be laid out the same way, just needs the form fields with the same names and field types. Just send the person a copy of the PDF.

3. LC Designer only saves in XML, and the PDF form cannot be edited outside of LC, not even in Acrobat.

So in short, just to keep it simple for the end user, if it's not too hard to redo the form in Acrobat, then that'd be easiest.

Dear Nixopax,

thank you so much - I will redo in Acrobat and not in Designer. No wonder I couldn't make it work - I don't feel quite so inadequate now. I so appreciate all your time trying to figure out what was wrong.

Dear Nixopax,

I recreated the form in Acrobat 8 Pro only and as a .fdf document on the web and the person getting the emails has the .pdf form. It works - some of the time. But he's still getting calls that it doesn't work for some. They are getting all kinds of warnings and then it won't send. Is it the form, or their email program? I know one of them uses IntelliMail program, and said they got numerous warnings as they tried to submit. The new form is located at http://immanuelaltamont.org/pdf/VBSRegistrationForm4.pdf

I just need to know if I should change something, or is the form good and we need to do something on the webhost end, or is it the end user and I need to use different software to submit differently altogether?

thanks again for all your time and efforts to try to assist me.

The way it looks right now, it should work. When releasing it into the wild though, it's hard to gauge exactly what software people have access to. Adobe Reader itself is the best option, but some people use Preview, Foxit, or other PDF readers which may or may not act in the same manner as Adobe Reader. As for the email option, I have Adobe Reader Version 9, so I get the option to send via Desktop Email Application or Internet Email. I'm unsure of what happens in versions prior to that. It may not be warnings per se, but rather dialog boxes that most people are not used to seeing, thus thinking they are warnings. If you choose Desktop Email Application, it will open your default Email Application (Outlook, Outlook Express, Thunderbird, IntelliMail, ETC...) with the FDF already attached. If they select the Internet Email option, it opens up a Save As Dialog window for the person to save the FDF, then they have to manually upload the FDF into their Internet Email application (Hotmail, Yahoo Mail, GMail, AOL, ETC...) and then send to the email address given. If you can find out the specific warnings they are getting, then we can try narrowing down the problem.

Ok, I have read through this thread and many others about this topic. I am looking for a solution that will allow me to create PDF forms for web, have the visitor fill them out and submit them through a submit button that will create and send an email to a specified address with the pdf attached. I dont want the site visitor to have to save the form and attach it them self or have the submit launch outllok, just want it to send to the address I have specified in a script. Currently I use ASP form2mail" which works ok but would like the professional look of using pdf forms. Any suggestions as to how I can accomplish this or find a tutorial on how its done? Seems like this would be a very common desire in the area of PDF froms on the web. Thank you.

we have a low cost solution to enable this through a hosted form processor script we decided to setup for forms we created for our clients and it removes the need to save the file for attachment or having an email client setup its also free to try and doesn't cost much anyway

http://www.pdf2email.co.uk

Thanks,
Ben

Okay, I have two questions: 1) Is it possible to add two email addresses in the 'submit email' button. I have not had any luck and think I may be doing something incorrectly. 2) When the form is emailed, I'd like it to be returned as a pdf file, not an .xml file. Any assistance would be greatly appreciated.

1) You can probably do this via ActionScript client-side with Extended Reader Rights; however, if you do this server-side, you will be able to do #2 with adobe reader w/o enabling extended rights; plus, a client-side e-mail application, such as Outlook, is NOT required.

2) Check out http://www.pdfemail.net/ for more information.

The answer to both questions is yes, if you use a script. The mailDoc function will create an email to one or more recipients, with the original PDF as an attachment.

Dear Nixopax,

we are using javascript submit form api to send packet through mail in fdf format in which embedfrom is set to true. fdf file created using acrobat 7 pro has f key which point to pdf path. but when we use 8.2.5 it use /UF key because of that we are not able to open fdf without the pdf. we are able to open without base pdf in acrobat 7 . please suggest some solution so that we are able to open fdf without base packet.

Brian:
I hope this will answer your original question...
OK: I have a form on my website that I would like users to fill out
OK: save and email back to me.
ERR: The standard email submit button sends the data as XML,
OK: however I would like the entire form returned instead.

Q: Is this possible, and if so, how?

FIRST WAY: Client Side
A: Set the submit action on the submit button to submit as "PDF" format
B: Re-Open the PDF in Adobe Acrobat, not LiveCycle
C: Perform a "Advanced->Enable Usage Rights in Reader
D: Save document as new file name with Usage rights enabled
E: Distribute PDF
A-D: Do this in Adobe "Acrobat" not LiveCycle, even if the form was created in LiveCycle, that's ok.

SECOND WAY: Server Side
A: Set the submit action on the PDF to the server-side script
B: Set the desired attachment format in the script
B: Upload the server-side script to the server
C: Distribute PDF

- Works w/o Client Side e-mail software
- Works in both standalone Reader and Reader browser plug-ins

For more info on how to send PDF-Emails: Visit PDFEmail.net
http://www.pdfemail.net/

I am a web designer and would like to be able to create fillable pdf forms for my clients, post the forms on my clients website and have the returned pdf files go to my clients email. They do not have Adobe Acrobat. Is this possible?

I have a question for pddesigner: I have created a form using Acrobat Pro and the form for users to fill out and return via email. The form's submit works fine when it's emailed but when I upload it to an website via FTP to be downloaded and filled out it says:

This document enabled extended features in Adobe Reader. The document has been changed since it was created and use of extended features is no longer available. Please contact the author for the original version of this document.

Any help would be greatly appreciated.

Dear PDD designer
i have used your code
if (typeof(app.viewerType)!="undefined")
if(app.viewerType == "Reader")
{
var msg = "You must use Adobe Reader 8.0 to send this form. You can download Adobe Reader 8 at: [url=http://www.adobe.com/products/acrobat/readstep2.php";]http://www.adobe.com/products/acrobat/readstep2.php";[/url]
app.alert(msg);
}
else
{
this.mailForm(true, "yourEmailAddress [at] yourCompany [dot] com", "ccEmailAddress [at] yourCompany [dot] com", "other_cc_emailAddress [at] yourCompany [dot] com",
"Your Form Title");
}

but when i compile it shows error in line app.alert(msg); can you resolve it.

The code got corrupted due to the changes in the forums software. Use this:
var msg = "You must use Adobe Reader 8.0 to send this form. You can download Adobe Reader 8 at: http://www.adobe.com/products/acrobat/readstep2.php";
app.alert(msg);

However, be aware that that link is not up to date, and that the latest version of Reader is 10, not 8.