How to Create Fillable Forms in Acrobat Pro XI

In this Acrobat tutorial, SkillForge (www.skillforge.com) instructor Donna shows how to create fill-able PDF forms in Adobe Acrobat Pro XI. To learn more about Acrobat Pro XI, see our Acrobat Training classes at: http://skillforge.com/courses/categor...

---

Closed Caption:

hello today we're going to learn how to
create interactive PDF forms with
acrobat pro 11 that can be opened and
saved by people using the free acrobat
reader
it's easiest to create the form in a
word processor then using acrobat pro 11
convert it to a PDF and from that point
converted to a fillable form here is the
form from a fictitious company it is a
survey form you'll notice it has a mix
of questions with checkboxes and radio
buttons on the first page then on the
second page
there are two additional questions that
do not have any check boxes or radio
buttons here to begin to convert this
PDF to a fillable form open tools and
then choose forms
open it as needed and then choose create
a crow but asks how we would like to
create the form we can either start from
scratch or templates or the easier way
which will be using today is choose from
existing document
just the current document acrobat
displays and information dialog box
explaining that it detected the form
fields
just click OK to remove that now let's
see how acrobat did on creating the form
fields
notice that acrobat has detected most of
the fields in the form
I
of these black squares are now fillable
form fields acrobat missed the yes/no
question -
it also missed the questions on page 2
because there's no way for it to
determine that those need form fields
and are not simply text
we're going to add a new field for
question 2 by clicking add new field
and then we have to choose the type for
number 2 question we're going to use the
radio button
here I just choose radio button and then
I move the cursor over the first radio
button
yes
and click it gives me the radio button
choices choice one and then the generic
group name
Group one
this radio button is yes so i'm going to
replace the generic choice one with the
word
yes i'll change group name to something
a bit more meaningful than group 1
such as on time
one thing that is important about radio
buttons you must have at least two and
that's what acrobat shows down here with
this warning
so now i'm going to click add another
radio button
and then position that over No
so here I'll change my choice to know
and leave the group name is on time
that's all I need for this particular
set of radio buttons
so with this is good
we look over in the field list will see
there are two radio buttons with the
group name on time and the buttons are
labeled yes and no that makes it very
easy to identify the fields that we just
added
now let's take a look at the second page
the two questions there do not have any
fields so we will have to add them
these will be text fields so again I
choose add new field and then select
text
I position the cursor where I want the
deal to begin
click field name comes up as just the
very generic text -
but i'm going to change that to email
address to make it a little more
descriptive and i'm also going to make
field a bit longer because some email
addresses can be fairly long so i'll
click over on the right
most side any of those three handles and
drag it to the right
i'm going to now add the other feedback
text field
so again i'll click on the add new field
and cheese text field
this time I'm going to position it
underneath because i'm going to make it
pretty long and big where the user can
type multiple lines of text if they so
choose
so I click here to initially position
the text field
and while we have this field name box
displayed i'm going to rename it call it
feedback
now i'm going to make a bigger i will
click on the bottom right corners handle
and drag it down and to the right to
make it larger
right now the field is bigger but we
still need to tell acrobat to allow
multiple lines of text plus a few other
things
all this is done through the properties
to open the properties i can either
double click or right click inside the
field and choose properties
we'll go to the options tab
and then come down here and check
multi-line
and also we want to limit the number of
characters not words for characters here
so I'm going to check that and give it a
limit of 750 characters that should be
plenty for any feedback comments
that's all we need for now so i can
click close
let's do a little testing and see how it
looks
so I'm going to preview it by clicking
preview
here are these to form fields they look
good so far i can move between them
but there's one thing I need to be aware
of if i uncheck the highlight existing
form fields button
they vanish
there's no way for the user to know that
there are actually fields there i'm
going to turn that highlight existing
back on then let's go back and edit this
form by clicking the edit button here
will need to modify the properties of
this field and we do that by right
clicking on the field and choosing
properties
click the appearance tab click border
color and then select the color you want
the border to be
the other choices here for the border
color of the line thickness and the one
style are fine so i will just click
close for now repeat again same process
for feedback
right-click choose properties then on
the appearance tab add a border color
and click close bonus information
because they're both the same field type
of text box
I could have selected both at the same
time by holding the shift key down as I
clicked on the second one
that way I could have easily change the
properties for both of them at one time
that could be very helpful if you have
multiple fields of the same type where
you need to make a change to the
properties
let's check it again preview
d select the highlight existing fields
good now we can see them and the user
can see them now let's go back to the
first page and see how it looks
the best way to test is by simply
pressing the tab key
that's what a lot of people will do to
move through the form i should be able
to reach each of the questions in order
come on number one word processor
that's good should jump to number 2 next
Oh skip number two so we have a little
fixing to do
let's check these this should just jump
from professionalism to technical
expertise instead of going through one
through five here
and that works it goes to number four
and then finally to number two okay so
we need to reposition number to question
what happens after this it should jump
to the second page
it does good said with that one
exception
the form looks good so far let's go back
to edit mode and go up to page one
at the right side under the fields area
will see that the on time
fields are at the very bottom this
matches that the tab order so we need to
fix those
all i need to do is reposition the
on-time fields where they need to go
which would be for professionalism i
click on the on time and start dragging
it up
it needs to be above the professionalism
once the field is in the correctly
and I release the mouse that's good
that's where it needs to be i'm going to
preview one more time and check the tab
order
it were
excellent it's working so now i'm going
to actually save the file
if I'm finished working on the form i
can save it as a reader extended PDF
that someone using adobe acrobat reader
can open type information into and then
save the changes
I choose file save as
other and choose reader extended PDF
and then from there I need to choose the
enable more tools including foreign
feeling and save
but unfortunately right now that is
grayed out
sometimes that happens when I encounter
this as simply close the form and then
reopen it
so I'm going to do that now I had just
saved it so i will not be losing
anything when I close it
file close and then i will immediately
reopen it
and do a file
save as other
and then choose
reader extended PDF
and enable more tools acrobat lets me
know what these more tools includes it
is including the safe form data a
fillable PDF form only
that is what i want so I'll choose save
now
i will save it as feedback again
replacing the original and click Save
and that's all there is to it
you now have the form that can be opened
completed and saved using the free adobe
acrobat reader
just be sure to test it open the form
and at acrobat reader complete all of
the form fields and then save it
be sure to use a different filename to
preserve the original version