Which is better for creating interactive forms Acrobat or Indesign ?

[toucancan]

Im looking to learn one of these two for creating interactive pdf forms.  Acrobat seems to be the base system for creating forms and easier to learn.  Indesign seems to have made changes to make it easier to do create looking forms albeit I understand a much harder system to learn but then I read it has various limitations. So which system is better for creating professional forms?  Pros vs cons?  Your assistance is appreciated. Thank you.

[try67]

My advice: Use InDesign to create the layout but add the actual form fields in Acrobat.

Always save a copy of the ID file, though, in case you want to make changes in the future.

[Bevi Chagnon - PubCom.com]

And my advice: if you're using the latest 13.1 version of Adobe InDesign, create not just the visible/printable skeleton, but also the form fields. Anchor the form fields into the text flow so that they appear with their text labels.

Export to PDF, and your form will need only a few tweaks in Acrobat.

Much easier and faster to create the form fields in InDesign, plus you can use Indy's layout tools to align and arrange the fields. So. Much. Easier!

[George_Johnson]

There's too much that you cannot do in InDesign that you need to do in Acrobat, that then needs to be redone in Acrobat if you ever need to revise the source document in InDesign. You can create an efficient workflow that involves creating the fields in InDesign, and using (possibly extensive) scripting in Acrobat to further revise the form in ways InDesign doesn't have any provisions for. Then have to an understand the InDesign-related bugs associated with such a workflow. For example, hierarchical field names, which I consider to be a basic and essential aspect of PDF forms, are seriously broken in InDesign, making it mostly useless as-is for interactive forms creation for me. It is the application I use almost exclusively for creating the underlying design of the forms I create, and I will sometimes create fields in the source document (mostly buttons with custom appearances), but then I use a somewhat complicated field naming convention in InDesign and extensive scripting in Acrobat to address the limitations of InDesign. In short, I don't think InDesign can be considered to be a complete professional PDF forms creation tool. It is fantastic for creating the layout of a form, but for adding the interactivity and smarts required for advanced PDF forms, you need Acrobat. To do it efficiently, you need to use various types of Acrobat-based automation scripting.