Skip to main content
C
ctroutm1
Participant
September 27, 2019
Question

Can I trust Acrobat to handle forms made in LiveCycle Designer for the foreseeable future?

  • September 27, 2019
  • 3 replies
  • 1081 views

So I  have been using Livecycle Designer to create forms for my organization and everything works fine right now. As long as myself and my computer are still alive I will have no problem creating additional forms or revising the ones already made. My fear, however is that one day Adobe updates Acrobat to remove its ability to open and process the forms which have been made in LiveCycle Designer. I know Adobe no longer supports LiveCycle, but will Acrobat ever lose its functionality to open the forms I've spent countless hours making? AcroForms are pathetic in their functionality and I dont have $100,000 laying around to drop on Adobe's Experience Manager Digital Forms.

    This topic has been closed for replies.

    3 replies

    radzmar
    Community Expert
    radzmarCommunity Expert
    Community Expert
    September 27, 2019

    AEM Forms Designer (formerly LiveCycle Designer) is still an active product developed and selled by Adobe to enterprises. So I don't see any risk of loosing XFA support for the next couple of years in Acrobat or Reader.

    Bevi Chagnon - PubCom.com
    Bevi Chagnon - PubCom.com
    Legend
    September 27, 2019
    AEM Forms is available, but LiveCycle Designer is a completely different product and has been discontinued by Adobe. I have a difficult time thinking that AEM = LCD or is its successor.
    |    Bevi Chagnon   |  Designer, Trainer, & Technologist for Accessible Documents ||    PubCom |    Classes & Books for Accessible InDesign, PDFs & MS Office |
    radzmar
    Community Expert
    radzmarCommunity Expert
    Community Expert
    September 28, 2019

    AEM Forms Designer is exactly the same as LiveCycle Designer, it has only been renamed. AEM Forms is a different story. this is a part of

    Adobe Experience Manager: See here: https://www.smartdoctech.com/aem-documentation/aem-forms-faqs.html#aem-forms-OSGi

     

    This is how AEM Forms Designer look like. 

     

    Bevi Chagnon - PubCom.com
    Bevi Chagnon - PubCom.com
    Legend
    September 27, 2019

    When you say "ability to open and process the forms," do you mean from a user viewpoint? Or a forms creator?

     

    If a user, I think they'll work for some time in the future. They are PDF files, which means they must adhear to the PDF ISO 32000 standards (which is now at version 2.0). On the other hand, LiveCycle makes XFA forms which are really XML wrapped up in a PDF wrapper so how well they conform to the standard is up for discussion.

     

    I a forms creator, nah. We can't open an XFA form in Acrobat now and edit the form.

     

    But someone could really make a nice tidy bundy of $ if they would come up with a utility that could edit XFA forms without LiveCycle or AEM or anything Adobe. Have had about 2 dozen institutional clients ask our firm this year about doing something about the LiveCycle problem.

     

    Just an idea!

    |    Bevi Chagnon   |  Designer, Trainer, & Technologist for Accessible Documents ||    PubCom |    Classes & Books for Accessible InDesign, PDFs & MS Office |
    C
    ctroutm1Author
    Participant
    September 27, 2019
    yeah, just from a user standpoint i want to know how long my users will be able actually fill out the forms in acrobat (which have dynamic features not available in acroforms).
    T
    Test Screen Name
    Legend
    September 27, 2019

    Personally? I wouldn't count on it.

    Terms & ConditionsAccessibility statement
    Using the community Terms of use Privacy Cookie preferences Do not sell or share my personal information ad choicesAdChoices