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how to fill in fields in pdf form using a microsoft excel database

Wpion
Registered: Jan 24 2008
Posts: 2

I have created an interactive form. there are certain fields that i would like to fill using a Databse created in excel.

example. the form has a field for name, another for address, another for phone, etc. Now i have a database created using excel with about 200 employees. i would like to now merge all the info into the fields in the pdf form.

I keep being told that it can be done but have not been able to do it using acrobat 7 professional.

thanks
Will

My Product Information:
Acrobat Pro 7.0, Windows
thomp
Expert
Registered: Feb 15 2006
Posts: 4411
There are a couple of ways to do this.

1. If this is a LiveCycle form you can use a "Data Connection" setup from the Data View tab in LiveCycle Designer. Local data connections will not work in Reader.

2. Acrobat JavaScript has the "ADBC" object for connecting to an ODBC registered DB. This will not work on Reader, and the ADBC object needs to be enabled if your on Acrobat 8. See this article

http://kb.adobe.com/selfservice/viewContent.do?externalId=333472

3. Place the DB on a server, and use the "submitForm()" function in Acrobat JavaScript to send a request to a server script that returns the data. This is by far the best solution, although probably not the easiest to implement. It works for both Acrobat Pro and Reader, and on versions going back into the dark ages of PDF. It doesn't require any special security or enabling, and it works from anywhere with an internet connection.

4. Save the excel data to a local "tab delimited" file and use the "importTextData()" function to grab the data.

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