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thiskey
thiskey
Participant
November 21, 2016
Question

Creating a letter with inline editable fields

  • November 21, 2016
  • 3 replies
  • 2719 views

I'm a designer but an Acrobat novice. I have Acrobat Pro DC 2015 on OSX El Capitan.

I can see how Acrobat can help create forms with editable / saveable input fields.

However, I'd like to be able to do something which is potentially slightly different: a letter with two or three fields (e.g. recipient name) that colleagues with Reader can type and save. The letter would need to maintain a consistent look, so the fields would need to be in the same typeface and flow perfectly with the rest of the text - unlike a standard form with input fields.

It would be possible for these editable fields to be at the end of a line, if that avoids problems.

Various design requirements means Word isn't ideal - we'd prefer an editable PDF.

Hopefully all clear, but here's a very basic example showing fields that colleagues with Reader would edit and save (NOT showing those design requirements!)....

Is this something I can achieve with Acrobat Pro DC?

Can you point me in the direction of a relevant tutorial?

Thanks very much for your help.

Tom

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3 replies

thiskey
thiskeyAuthor
Participant
November 22, 2016

George_Johnson​ and try67​ - thanks very much, that's really helpful. Differing answers but you touch on the same points so it gives me something to work with. I'll have to look into how to make the fields read-only once my colleagues have completed them - looks like there's guidance on that elsewhere.

try67
Community Expert
try67Community Expert
Community Expert
November 21, 2016

No, it's not really possible to "re-flow" static text in a PDF file in this manner. The only way you can achieve that is if the entire text is a part of a text field. However, then you have an issue of how to prevent the user from editing the rest of the text, while still allowing them to enter the customer's name, fee, and their own name.

One possible solution to that problem is to use other fields where the user enters just those specific values, and then a script composes the long paragraph, seamlessly including them in the static text. You can also use pop-up windows instead of fields for that purpose.

All of this requires a bit of scripting know-how, though.

    G
    George_Johnson
    Inspiring
    November 21, 2016

    Yes, you can do that with Acrobat as long as the font you want to use allows for editable embedding. I would suggest making entire paragraphs into a field and set the default value of a field to the default text you want. You can provide a means to set the fields to read-only once the user has completed the form so that the recipient can't easily alter it.

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