Title: Can You Manage Multiple Customers, Invoices, or Contacts Within a Single PDF Using Free Adobe Acrobat Reader?

Question

I've been developing self-contained interactive PDF form applications for well over 30 years that use document-level JavaScript, JSON objects, and hidden form fields to accomplish the tasks described/alluded to in the title above.

I'm interested in whether any members of the forum have encountered a need for this type of functionality or would find a practical explanation of the underlying techniques useful.

I'd welcome hearing about other approaches as well.

boilermaker73 · Accepted Answer

You’ve got to be kidding me! Is this your actual response? No different than your response to my previous post yesterday accusing me of antagonizing you, the moderator’. Seriously, do you have a comprehension problem? Please refrain from responding to any futureposts to the Adobe Acrobat Community forum by me. In closing, I recommend you enroll in an accredited online class in remedial reading and comprehension. Last but not least, members reading Randy’s comment ‘If you’re looking to create your PDF form with all those features? Not a chance’, please be advised this statement is totally presumptuous, false, and misleading as provided by an Adobe Acrobat Community moderator! All considered, ‘Talk is cheap’ not to mention, I can prove everythingstated in my initial post as provided. In reality, the proof exists on my website URLthat I cannot provide for fear of retaliation from a moderator like ‘Randy’ looking to enforce violation of Adobe’s forum rules. If the moderator is willing to give me permission in response to thispost for all to see and put his money where his mouth is, I’m willing to provide a PDF that anyone interested may download and test for themselves using the Free Adobe Reader.

Randy Hagan · Answer

If you’ve created this form already, and you have “reader-enabled” it, you can send out the form and customers can “fill it out” with Adobe Reader. Whether you can guarantee that it will work for everyone? That’s something you’ll discover with testing. And on the computer desktop, and proper form construction, that’s quite doable. But with mobile devices performance will be spotty at best, and with other PDF readers, including web browser/reader utilities, all bets are off. They may or may not work.

If you’re looking to create your PDF form with all those features? Not a chance. To create it, you would need Acrobat Standard, or better, Acrobat Pro to create those reader-enabled forms.

If you’re looking to share your findings? You’ve got a wide range of users browsing these forums. Sharing is learning. I’d say go for it.

Hope this helps,

Randy

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