Hi - our client wants us to create an accessible LiveCycle form from a 60-page, tagged PDF, into which they plan to merge data and save individualized reports. About 15 pages of the document will have fields, several hundred in all. We created a one-page form which they tested, and their process worked fine.
My problem is, now that I've imported the entire PDF into LiveCycle and am trying to add the fields, it is very, very, very slow going. Tried tweaking the import options, no improvements. I've created accessible forms from tagged, 30-page PDFs, and those were a bit slower to work with than one-pagers, but not impossibly slow as this one is.
I know only the basics of setting up & tagging fields in LiveCycle. Is there a way to create the forms individually and then combine them into a single document? For now I'm going to isolate each page that needs fields, set them up as one-page forms, then copy & paste the fields into the main document, which will take just one paste action per page. Is there a better way to handle this?
converting lengthy PDF document to LiveCycle form
2011-07-28 08:57:35
Answered
My Product Information:
LiveCycle Designer, Windows
LiveCycle Designer, Windows
2011-07-28 10:53:48
#1
Does it need to be an XFA form, or can you create the fields in Acrobat?
2011-07-28 13:29:42
#2
Hi George, thanks for responding. Our client's programmer said LiveCycle, and wants the field properties to include Value = "Calculated - Read Only" with the option "Calculation Script" selected. Is there a corresponding setting in Acrobat forms? The form only needs text fields, check boxes, and radio buttons. I don't know how they're merging the data, it will involve some calculation. It's data we've provided as main part of the contract that they have further manipulated. Unfortunately I'm not a programmer, I'm just trying to create the form, and discovered that with this document it takes a great deal of time for LiveCycle to react to anything I do.
2011-07-28 14:03:53
#3
Accepted Answer
Yes, you can set up fields in Acrobat to be calculated fields. Any calculation scripts used would necessarily be different. You should be able to import data just fine, though there are differences in the particulars between the two types of forms (Acroform vs XFA), but performance should be dramatically better. Without knowing more details, though, it's hard to make specific recommendations. XFA may be fine for documents that are first and foremost forms, but as you've found, can be problematic for the type of document you're dealing with.