How to manage large fillable form documents?

[helpful_dancer157F]

I want to create large multi page fillable form documents for pdf. 

I am looking for a single tool to create Microsoft Word-like documents, but one that allows you to easily identify various fillable form components, such as text, checkboxes, dropdown lists, etc. I want to be able to from that one tool press "save as pdf" and create my fillable form pdf.

There are many approaches, where you create your document in one tool, save as pdf, and then pull it into another tool to add you fillable fields. Now imagine a 50 page document with 50 or so fields on each page, and you find one mistake you have to correct, or you decide you have to add two pages somewhere in the middle. You will then have to go back to the application that you used to add the fields, and redo the entire process.

Is there an approach, where you are managing the original document including defining the fillable fields, and you can easily edit and regenerate the fillable form document?

[creative explorer]

@helpful_dancer157F if I am understanding the main question, can you create a fillable form that was created from a Microsoft Word 50-page document?

Yes. With the use of Acrobat Pro. Under All Tools - Click on Prepare Form. And it will create a form with text field properties. 

I went ahead and double-click on a text field to open the properties, and I can edit the appearance of the font among other things.

[helpful_dancer157F]

My question is about the ONE tool that allows you to manage your document and create a fillable PDF form.

Your example above uses two tools, which means that if I have to make adjustments to my original Word document, I have to redo the entire process of adding the form fields to the document again. I want to find a tool that allows me to manage both the document and the fillable form fields in one place.

[try67]

> Now imagine a 50 page document with 50 or so fields on each page, and you find one mistake you have to correct, or you decide you have to add two pages somewhere in the middle. You will then have to go back to the application that you used to add the fields, and redo the entire process.

This workflow is not necessary. You can generate a new static file and then use the Replace Pages command in Acrobat to replace the pages of the old file with those from the new ones. All fields you added to the old file will remain in place. Of course if the layout changed then you'll need to adjust their locations, but you won't need to start all over again.

Another option is to use a script to add the fields, in which case you can do it with 100% accuracy, as opposed to the unreliable (and often unpredictable) fields detection wizard command in Acrobat. A script can identify certain characters and add fields on top of them.

For example, I've developed two (paid-for) tools that can create text fields from underlines and check-boxes or radio-buttons from specific Wingdings characters, with 100% accuracy. You can find them here:

https://www.try67.com/tool/acrobat-reader-convert-underscores-to-text-fields

https://www.try67.com/tool/acrobat-reader-convert-wingdings-characters-to-check-boxes-or-radio-butto...