How to create electronically fillable PDF forms?

Business form is vital for any organization. Generally, a fillable form has to be printed and filled manually by the customer/client and then sent via mail or fax. Most of the forms appear in PDF format with boxes and dashes, where the required information has to be filled in after printing the form. Though many business organizations use this type of PDF forms, they do have certain disadvantages. For visually impaired people or those with physical disabilities, it is not feasible to fill in the form and mail it across all on their own. They should seek some assistance, hence privacy is affected here. Other drawbacks of print forms are higher processing time and increased possibilities of errors. If it is an electronically fillable PDF form, then all the mentioned challenges can be eliminated. In addition, a notification of receipt can also be sent to the sender on receiving the form.

Now, you might be puzzled on how to create an electronically fillable PDF form. With the Adobe Acrobat 9 Pro Extended installed in your system, converting a traditional print from, be it a Word, Excel, or PDF form, into an electronically fillable is no more an intimidating task. If you have a PDF form, open it with Acrobat Professional. Or, if you have to create a new form, open a Word document, enter all the fields, and save the file in PDF format. Now, launch Acrobat Professional and open the print form that needs to be converted into electronically fillable form. In the toolbar, select Forms->Add/Edit Fields, following which Acrobat automatically detects the fields in the form. You can even create a non-existing form using the Adobe LiveCycle Designer (ALD), which comes built-in with the Adobe Acrobat Pro.

There are various tools integrated into the Forms toolbar, which are discussed below:

Text Field: It is the commonly used tool and ideal to enter name, address, and such details of the user.

Check Box: If you want the user to select more than one option from the given list, then the check box tool is ideal.

Radio Button: It is used when only one option has to be checked by the user. Once a box is selected, this tool won't allow checking back.

List Box: When the user have to be provided with a list of option to choose from, then this tool is ideal. One disadvantage of this box is user cannot view all the listed options at a time.

Combo Box: It works similar to the list box, the major difference being this tool enables the users to view all the listed option in a drop down box.

The Button Tool: Buttons are created in forms to perform certain actions, say on clicking a button the user will land up in a page, hide/show a field, or form gets submitted.

The Digital Signature Field Tool: Adding this tool to the form allows user to add their digital signature, if any, or images instead.

The benefits of the fillable PDF forms created using Adobe Acrobat 9 Pro Extended do not end here. You can even add images in the intended place, like you do in the Word document. Watermarking is also possible with these forms.