In https://helpx.adobe.com/acrobat/using/setting-action-buttons-pdf-forms.html you can read:
Add a submit button
When you distribute a form, Acrobat automatically checks the form. If it doesn’t find a submit button, it adds a Submit Form button to the document message bar. Users can click the Submit Form button to send completed forms back to you. If you don’t plan to use the Submit Form button created by Acrobat, you can add a custom submit button to your form.
I added a Submit button to my form but when I distribute the form I get two submit buttons: the one I added plus the one in the standard purple banner as shown below:
So despite my submit button, Adobe Acrobat still created its own. Any explanation?
The only reason for me to add my own submit button was to do some validation before submitting the form.
In fact, I would like to have a submit button with the following JavaScript code:
if (FormOk()==true) {
var nButton = app.alert({
cMsg: "Do you really want to submit this application form?",
cTitle: "Submit form",
nIcon: 2, nType: 2
});
if ( nButton == 4 ) {
// Submit form to UNC
this.submitForm({cURL: "\\SERVER\SHARE\", cSubmitAs:"PDF"});
app.alert({
cMsg: "Your application has been submitted",
cTitle: "Submit form",
nIcon: 3});
} else {
app.alert({
cMsg: "Your application was NOT submitted",
cTitle: "Submit form",
nIcon: 3});
}
}
This would validate the data entered (code for FormOk function not included) and if everything is Ok then would ask the user for confirmation before submitting the form.
Thanks in advance!
15
Replies
You are absolutely right! There are big problems but with your reply.
I never mentioned that my form had not worked but just that I have ended with two Submit buttons despite Adobe Acrobat documentation stating:
“When you distribute a form, Acrobat automatically checks the form. If it doesn’t find a submit button, it adds a Submit Form button to the document message bar”
From Adobe Acrobat User Guide, “if you distribute a PDF using your own server location, you can specify a network folder, a Windows server running Microsoft SharePoint Services, or a web server folder”.
I am pretty aware of the fact that SUBMIT DOES NOT MEAN SAVE and that’s exactly why I wanted the SUBMIT functionality which creates a form distribution & data collection workflow.
The Form Distribution Wizard allows you to specify a UNC for the network shared folder as shown below:
So despite the submitForm page in the JavaScript API not mentioning the possibility of using a UNC, my instinct suggested me to test using a UNC instead of a URL which, to my satisfaction, worked as I expected.
In my original post I wrote \\SERVER\SHARE\ which is the Windows notation for a UNC (not a filename) however in Adobe Acrobat, as in UNIX/LINUX, you must use forward slash and write //SERVER/SHARE/ instead.
The custom Submit button in my test form (TEST1.pdf) has the following script associated to the MouseUp event:
// TEST1: UNC
var nButton = app.alert({
cMsg: "Do you really want to submit this application form?",
cTitle: "Submit form",
nIcon: 2, nType: 2
});
if ( nButton == 4 ) {
// Submit form to UNC
this.submitForm({cURL:"//RNAS/DB/TEST/", cSubmitAs:"PDF"});
app.alert({
cMsg: "Your application has been submitted",
cTitle: "Submit form",
nIcon: 3
});
} else {
app.alert({
cMsg: "Your application was NOT submitted",
cTitle: "Submit form",
nIcon: 3
});
}
When filling the form, clicking the custom Submit button worked as shown below:
After clicking Yes:
After clearing the checkbox and clicking Allow:
The weird part, which was the reason of my original post, is that despite having a custom Submit button in the form, Acrobat generated its default Submit Form button in the purple banner which also worked the usual way.
After that you can see both responses in Tracker:
Similar results are obtained using the equivalent URL as in:
this.submitForm({cURL:"smb://RNAS/DB/TEST/", cSubmitAs:"PDF"});
As you can see, reliable workflows can also use smb protocol. Keep in mind that most small businesses outsource their web services but they still have an onsite file server using CIFS hence the value of this distribution method.
BTW, in my 30+ year career in IT, many times I have found undocumented features and/or things that don’t work as documented.
Unfortunately, my issue still needs a solution and I have been thinking that it may be that I simply need a way to hide Adobe’s default Submit Form button.
Same result. The distributed form got two Submit buttons:
Both buttons worked Ok and I got the responses on Tracker as shown below:
Thanks for this, I couldn't find any other place that went through how to fix this. The extra submit button was doing my head in!
I was wondering if you still had the "send form" window pop up when you submit? I'd like this to go away and just add the response to the distributed response form, but not sure how I can hide this (see the window below).
Thanks
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