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There must be an easier way??

Lori G
Registered: Apr 29 2009
Posts: 9

I have a situation where I have to distribute teaching contracts to all teachers in our district. They digitally sign their contract and return it to me.
 
Right now I create the contracts in a database and export them (print them) to a pdf file. I then split that file into their individual contracts (200+), place a date field and an electronic signature field in each of the contracts and then email each individual their contract for signature.
 
There must be an easier way??

My Product Information:
Acrobat Pro 9.0, Windows
UVSAR
Online
Expert
Registered: Oct 29 2008
Posts: 1357
Yes there is, but without discussing your workflow in detail it's hard to give concrete examples. You can certainly create form fields using batch scripting, so applying the fields to a set of documents in one go is easy - but creating the files automatically in the first place will depend on what changes between each one. You *could* do the entire thing on a server (creation, adding form fields, email distribution) via LiveCycle or the Adobe PDF libraries but if this is a one-off task it's probably not worth the investment (time and financial) in a server-side solution.
Lori G
Registered: Apr 29 2009
Posts: 9
Being able to create form fields and applying the fields to a set of documents using batch scripting would be super as that is half of the battle. If I could get that accomplished it would cut my time in half. I could then continue to email the individual documents....I have never done a batch script before but love to learn.
maxwyss
Registered: Jul 25 2006
Posts: 255
Setting up a batch sequence would definitely help you. You would essentially run a JavaScript function which adds the fields etc.

The first step would be to develop the function, so that it runs on a single document. You would have to look at the addField() method in the Acrobat JavaScript documentation. As we can assume that all pages are the same size, you wouldn't have problems with determining the coordinates to place the fields.

You might even set up some kind of lists of your teacher's names, and merge them into the document as well.

HTH.

Max Wyss.