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Import PDF Form ---Add Dynamic Fields----Save as dynamic form

hollywoodstarrs
Registered: Jan 1 2011
Posts: 5
Answered

Alright I have a form that i am working with to make dynamic. You can view the form at this url:
 
http://lafd.org/prevention/pdfforms/R4012%20Fire%20Protection%20Equipment%20Performance%20Certification.pdf
 
I imported it into livecycle designer es and apparently it was brought in as artwork. Alright that's fine but it also has all of the dynamic fields i would want in every space. I go to save this form and it is only limited to Static Form type. Is there anyway around this? I have searched everywhere for an answer.
 
Allen

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

My Product Information:
LiveCycle Designer, Windows
DaveyB
Registered: Dec 10 2010
Posts: 70
Accepted Answer
I've just tried opening your form (Livecycle designer ver 8.05), and I get a glitch: I can only access the fields in the form, I can't access any of the text. While this seems to be a bug, it does lead to a possible solution for your problem!

Step 1: Open the existing form in LiveCycle, and open a new file also. Save the new file as a Dynamic XML form. On page 1 of the existing form, press ctrl-a (select everything) and ctrl-c (copy), then switch to the new blank form and press ctrl-v (paste). You should now have all of your fields in the dynamic form, with no text, laid out exactly as they were in the original form. You will need to repeat this for each page in the form.

Step 2: Open the original form (or a copy of it) in Acrobat and remove all of the fields that were copied over. Now reduce the remaining text to a full size image file (tiff, jpeg, png) - there are several sites online that can do this for you - Google :)

Step 3: Set the new image in the master page for the Dynamic XML document, which will make it the background for the dynamic page - you may have to play around a little getting the fields on the dynamic page to align (which is why I suggested removing them from the Acrobat document before converting it to an image). You can create multiple master pages and assign a dynamic page to a specific master page.

I have just tried this with the first page of your document, and it works great. You'll need to set the page height and width to exactly match the original document, or fiddle with the field placement slightly, but hopefully this will make your life a lot easier !!

DaveyB

LiveCycle Designer 8.0
"Genius is one percent inspiration, ninety-nine percent perspiration." ~~ Thomas Edison
"If at first you don't succeed, get a bigger hammer." ~~ Alan Lewis
"If the conventional doesn't work, try the unconventional" ~~ DaveyB

hollywoodstarrs
Registered: Jan 1 2011
Posts: 5
This was the answer that was given to me by Adobe Forums: Niall of www.assuredynamics.com

When you create a form by importing an existing form, eg from a Word document, then you cannot save it as a Dynamic XML Form.



However you can still have a functioning form, its just that you can't have dynamic behaviour like growing fields, flowing content or add instances/rows.



Here is your form back: https://acrobat.com/#d=ROPU58OJ8zxB51INDpyjHQ



The main problem is that it was set up for PDF/A standard, which prevented the fields accepting data. I have removed the PDF/A standard from the profile (preflight) and it seems to work okay now:


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