These forums are now Read Only. If you have an Acrobat question, ask questions and get help from one of our experts.

Excel column data feeding a drop down?

Forum Index > Forms: LiveCycle Designer > Excel column data feeding a drop down?
2008-10-13 15:17:26
cyanstudios
Registered: May 6 2008
Posts: 81

If I wanted to have a drop down menu that is easily changed by editing an excel file or similar spreadsheet type of database, could it be as easy as pointing the form to that spreadsheet and column that exists on the same directory on our website?

I see a lot of very wordy tutorials that seem to be used for further functionality than something this simple.

What would be the best way to start this process? I have the form and I have the spreadsheet file, I just need to bind them together.

My Product Information:
LiveCycle Designer, Unix/Linux
Top
2008-10-15 11:18:45
#1
sbrof
Registered: Jul 2 2008
Posts: 19
I also would like to figure out how to do such a thing. If possible.
Top
2008-10-17 14:55:01
#2
sconforms
Expert
Registered: Jul 10 2007
Posts: 92
There's no way to directly link a form to an Excel file. Your best bet would be to create a [url=http://forms.stefcameron.com/2006/09/29/selecting-specific-database-records/]data connection[/url] to that Excel file using the Microsoft ODBC Excel driver, if they still make it. Once that's setup, you should be able to access your Excel file as if it was a database.

Stefan Cameron obtained his bachelor's degree with Honors in Computer Science at the University of Ottawa and is a Computer Scientist working on Adobe's LiveCycle server products, in particular on LiveCycle Designer ES for the past 5 years.

Top
2008-10-20 13:47:30
#3
cyanstudios
Registered: May 6 2008
Posts: 81
I appreciate you taking the time Stefan, your blog and other projects have been a huge help in me stepping into what may be a career that revolves around livecycle forms.

Right now, what I'm dealing with is an accounting system. Field workers are expected to open a .PDF timesheet form that they can enter a number of hours worked and the values all eventually get emailed to our accounting department in a format that just imports into their software.
Elimination of input is key.

There are two options for import:
.DIF files that are spreadsheet based, so they can be made in excel and specific cells determine specific values
or
.TXT that recognizes each field of information based on the "column", or how the values are sequenced in a string.

I'm close to making this work with the .txt string, but we would also like to populate some fields on the .pdf via spreadsheets and perhaps an sql connection.

The .PDF itself resides on the website server, which is hosted on Linux, so I would like just at least a quick steer in the right direction on how to handle this. It seems a lot of these methods are relying on ODBC.

I'm sorry if I sound like I'm getting ahead of myself, but I plan to master this stuff and I have to start somewhere.
Top
2011-01-02 15:22:45
#4
hollywoodstarrs
Registered: Jan 1 2011
Posts: 5
Cyanstudios,
I wanted to see if you were able to do this without pulling your hair out at the same time. Let me know how things worked out for you.

Allen Botello
Director ipFireBridge
allen [at] ipfirebridge [dot] com
www.ipfirebridge.com

Top