What product replaces LiveCycle Designer?

[anonymous7510]

We have recently purchased Acrobat DC Pro to replace the older version (8 I believe it was). The previous version of Acrobat that we used included LiveCycle Designer, which we used to build a number of forms. We find that the new version does not include LiveCycle Designer, and that our forms can't be edited using the expensive software that we've purchased for this purpose. To recreate the forms that we've built would be quite a feat. What currently available product allows the user to edit forms that were created in LiveCycle Designer?

[Dov Isaacs · Accepted solution]

You can license the most recent version of LiveCycle Designer separately. Go to <Download Livecycle designer tool | Adobe LiveCycle Enterprise Suite 4>. There is no special pricing for upgrading from the LiveCycle Designer that was included with older Acrobat versions.

Note that both Adobe and the industry in general has deprecated LiveCycle forms in favor of either the original Acrobat forms or web-based forms at this point (something you probably don't want to hear).

          - Dov

[anonymous7510]

Thank you. No, not what I wanted to hear at all, but at least it's information. I think it extremely poor customer service to have included LiveCycle for form creating/editing, only to render those forms useless a few versions later

[Dov Isaacs]

We don't like the answer either, but a major part of the problem was that the LiveCycle forms feature was not adopted by other PDF viewer vendors (such as by Apple with their MacOS and iOS Preview program and thus, forms created with this format were effectively orphans from day 1.

          - Dov

[anonymous7510]

Thank you Mr. Isaacs. I appreciate your response.

[Karl Heinz Kremer]

Let me add my 2 cents. This is basically what I tell my customers: These forms are not useless, as long as you don't need to change them, and as long as you can control the environment in which they are used, you can keep on using them. I would hope that  Adobe is not going to remove support for these forms from Acrobat or Adobe Reader any time soon, so they can still be filled out and processed. When you come to a point where you need to modify one of these forms, you have to make a decision about how you want to do that. There are two options: You can modify the form (or, if you don't want to invest in yet another tool and learn how to use it, have somebody modify the form for you), or you can replace the form. When you decide that you want to replace the form, you have to decide if you want to stay within the PDF world and replace it with an "AcroForm" (these are the forms that are created with Adobe Acrobat), or to move away from PDF and use e.g. web forms.

Because you have a license for Acrobat 8, you could even run that in a virtual machine on your computer and only bring it up when you have to modify these forms.

[anonymous7510]

Thank you Mr. Kremer. No, the forms would not be useless if they didn't require modification. They are very nice in their current state. Unfortunately, for our use they do require modification. Also unfortunately, our Acrobat 8 install is no longer functional (which is the reason that we were able to purchase the new version at this point). I would happily continue to use the older version if it were available to me. Thinking into the future, however, we will likely need to rebuild our forms into something that will be more universal. I will present the available options to our decision makers and go from there. Thanks for your input.

[Test Screen Name]

If you'd kept up to date rather than waiting a decade to upgrade... At the time of removal people with Acrobat 10 who upgraded to Acrobat 11 were entitled to get a free LiveCycle Designer license. But that has long finished.

[anonymous7510]

Test Screen Name,

Your response is exceedingly unhelpful. In my institution I have no control over timing of software upgrades. Your response didn't answer my question at all, though thankfully I had already received an appropriate response from Mr. Isaacs.

Good day to you, and Merry Christmas.

[cricket1001-2]

Test_Screen_Name:  Your response to Anonymous7510 is absolutely awful and uncalled for and makes no sense at all.  How dare you lash out at Anonymous7510 saying such a negative and sarcastic and stupid remark that if she would have upgraded she wouldn't be in the situation she is in.  I also am trying to modify a form in our police department that was made with LifeCycle Designer.  Recently we upgraded to Acrobat DC Pro.  I have only worked here for 3 years and until today have never heard of LifeCycle Designer.  Whoever created this form had to have created this form years ago and they wouldn't have access to LifeCycle now either.  There are many reasons why people haven't updated their LifeCycle program.  I think Dov Isaacs and Karl_Heinz_Kramer gave very good info and were also very kind and understanding.  I hope you do not work with the public.  I hope that you learn from this and please, please do not say anything in messages unless you have something to add that is instructive without being negative.

[Marietaa]

Exactly like that, I saw him/her be like that on one other post today, he is very disrepectful and not helpful at all.

[Neda G]

Hi, how do you add a row in Acrobat Pro DC? I converted a Form in Word Format into PDF. I need it in PDF format to lock some fields after the digital signature.

Now, I need to add a row to some of the last rows in my form (I don't consider it a table, because I don't know the table name). I know I can run Java script but I don't know what is the name of my table. 

Do you know how I can add a row dinamically in Acrobat Pro Dc?

Thanks,