Using Help
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160
Adobe Acrobat Help
PDF Forms
Using Help
|
Contents
|
Index
Back
160
Working with the Fields palette and context menu
The Fields palette in the navigation pane lists all the form fields (in a hierarchical structure)
that you have created in your document. You can jump to a particular form field by
double-clicking the field’s icon in the Fields palette. You can sort, rename, delete, lock,
unlock, and set properties for form fields using the Fields palette context menu and the
palette menu.
To show or hide the Fields palette:
Do one of the following:
•
Click the Show/Hide Navigation Pane button
, and click the Fields tab.
•
Choose Window > Show Fields.
To choose a command from the Fields palette menu:
Position the pointer over the triangle in the upper right corner of the palette, hold down
the mouse button to open the menu, and drag to the command you want.
To choose a command from the field context menu:
1
Right-click on the field in the Fields palette.
2
Choose the command you want:
•
The Go to field command selects the field in the form.
•
The Rename field command allows you to type in a new name for the field.
•
The Delete field(s) command deletes the selected field and any of its child fields.
•
The Lock command locks the field so that no modifications can be made to it until it is
unlocked. To unlock a locked field, click the Unlock command.
•
The Properties command brings up the Field Properties dialog box, where you can edit
the properties of the field just as you did when creating it.
Making forms Web ready
PDF forms can be useful for submitting and collecting information over the Web. This is
done in Acrobat forms by providing several button actions that perform functions similar
to some HTML scripting macros. For this process to work, you must have a CGI application
on the Web server to collect and route the data to a database. Any existing CGI application
that collects data from forms (in HTML or FDF format) can be used to collect data from PDF
forms.
Before you complete these tasks, make sure that your form field names match those set in
the CGI application. For information on the Form Data Format (FDF), see the FDF Toolkit
Overview, which is available on the Adobe Web site (www.adobe.com).
Important:
CGI scripts must be built outside of Acrobat, and their creation is not covered
by the Adobe Acrobat product. See
“Defining CGI export values” on page 163
.
Creating Submit Form and Reset Form buttons
You can send form data to a Web server by specifying a Uniform Resource Locator (URL)
with the Submit Form action. You can use the Reset Form action to clear any form data
already entered.