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How to auto populate dates for documents that may be in a random order on subsequent pages.

Community Beginner ,
Aug 12, 2020 Aug 12, 2020

I am trying to combine multiple forms into one to cut back on the human error involved. I've been able to work out most of the problems so far, but there is one I am having a hard time figuring out. Sorry for not attaching the forms. They are confidential.

 

On one form there is a list of documents by date. On the other two forms, they are listed by point value. Not all forms will include the same documents. There are 15 different types of documents with points ranging from 2 to 7 points. There may be multiple documents of the same type or all different types used. For the sake of argument, assume the following documents are used.

 

Document type A (2 Points) - 1 document with date of 5/7/19

Document type E (3 Points) - 2 documents with dates of 3/2/18 and 9/6/20

Document type J (4 Points) - 1 document with date of 11/4/17

Document type N (6 Points) - 1 document with date of 12/9/16

 

On the two forms where they are based on points, they would be in the exact order as shown, but on the one different document, they would be in the following order:

 

Type N (12/9/16)

Type J (11/4/17)

Type E (3/2/18)

Type A (5/7/19)

Type E (9/6/20)

 

As each different form would have different documents with different dates, there is no real way to know which forms will be in which order for the last document.

 

Ultimately, I want to make the form auto populate the dates for the documents on all three forms in the correct order as one of the biggest issues is people inputting different dates on the forms. Is there any way to do this in Adobe, or do I need to find a way to make the headers and footers all different on multiple pages in a Word document. Thank you so much for any advice!

TOPICS
How to , PDF forms
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Community Expert ,
Aug 12, 2020 Aug 12, 2020

If this is related to legal documents or preparing exhibits,  I would say to employ a batch stamping action with JavaScript.

 

In any case I think is better if you reach out to ACP Thom Parker, this is definitely his lane.

 

 

See here: 

 

 

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Community Beginner ,
Aug 13, 2020 Aug 13, 2020

 I reached out to Thom Parker and I am awaiting a response. I am not sure if the stamp option will be useful, but I will try it out. I've never used them before so hopefully I can figure out how to use them. Thank you so much for the advice!

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Community Expert ,
Aug 13, 2020 Aug 13, 2020

You're welcome. See my last reply below.

 

I work with a lot of government documents too and I had to learn javascript myself to get stuff done.

 

Is not very pleasant to sit down and start learning outside of your own real life job to get stuff done that government can pay for. I see how the money is squandered every day in useless crap.  

 

So if this project is so important to your superior have them do the outsourcing. Besides they should have their own IT personnel to be able to do that.

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Community Expert ,
Aug 13, 2020 Aug 13, 2020

Depending on how consistent the documents are it might be possible to do it using a custom-made script.
If you're interested in hiring a professional to write such a script for you feel free to contact me privately via [try6767 at gmail.com]. I'll of course need to see several sample files to say for sure if it's possible or not, and if so, how much it will cost.

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Community Beginner ,
Aug 13, 2020 Aug 13, 2020

I am a low level employee for a state government agency that cannot pay for a professional to do this and the documents are restricted and confidential. If I even give you a sample I would be fired and potentially brought up on charges. Thank you though.

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Community Expert ,
Aug 13, 2020 Aug 13, 2020

I'm afraid you're gonna have to learn how to implement JavaScript yourself and get it done, or tell your state government agency to consider outsourcing.

 

 

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Community Expert ,
Aug 13, 2020 Aug 13, 2020
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This issue may be solvable with scripting on the form. As described you've got a somewhat complicated set of requirements. If there are multiple instances of related entries that have to be connected in some way, then there needs to be a clear way to identify the entries. Points, Type, and dates don't me anything to us without context. The first part of solving any programming issue is to describe the problem in clear and concise terms. There are no assumptions in programming.  But this doesn't mean long descriptings.  Please don't post again until you can describe the issue you want to solve in very specific, short text.   

Thom Parker - Software Developer at PDFScripting
Use the Acrobat JavaScript Reference early and often

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