How to do 300+ Check box's at once?

[jayp92723656]

I have a Quality Control Checklist that I can't get to auto-fill with the Prepare Form tool. Here is what the form looks like. I can only get it if I follow the guides of THIS and it would make my form look really bad. ex: [ ] Complete [ ] Requires Revision. Whereas the linked view is 100 times cleaner looking. I can create the boxes myself but this would have to be done on 300+ lines.

Any tips on how to make it work?

Note: Started in Excel

Thanks!

[try67]

If the forms detection wizard doesn't work the options of doing it automatically are very limited.

One thing that does work is to use a script to create the check-boxes. That can be done if you use Wingdings to draw them in Excel.

If you do that then you could use this (paid-for) tool I've developed to create 100% accurate fields over those boxes, in a matter of seconds: Custom-made Adobe Scripts: Acrobat/Reader -- Convert Wingdings To Fields

[Thom Parker]

Actually, as long as any font was used to create the boxes you could write a script to find them and place a checkbox over it. Not too difficult.

But you have a bigger issue. How is the data for these checkboxes going to be used?  If it's all visual, then you're fine with any naming convention. But if the data is to be moved to a spreadsheet, or used in scripts on the form, then you'll need be to organized with how the checkbox names are created.

[try67]

True, but with wingdings you can just make the field transparent and it will still work. Also, you have less of a chance of it finding false positives.

[TᴀW]

I don't have any tips on how to get the auto-detect to work better (maybe someone else does), but I would prepare a long form like that in InDesign and export as interactive PDF from InDesign. That way you wouldn't need to rely on auto-detect at all...

[JR Boulay]

With Acrobat Pro this task should not take more than a minute, without using JavaScript or the detection wizard:

1. Create the first checkbox on the top left corner, set its "Export Value" to 1 (for example).

2. Right-clic upon this checkbox and use "Create Multiple Copies" to create the first column.

3. Select all checkboxes, copy-paste or ALT+clic&drag** to duplicate them as a second column, select all checkboxes of the 2nd column and set their "Export Value" to 2.

4. Select all checkboxes of any column, copy-paste or ALT+clic&drag** to duplicate them as a third column, select all checkboxes of the 3rd column and set their "Export Value" to 3.

5. Select all checkboxes of any column, copy-paste or ALT+clic&drag** to duplicate them as a fourth column, select all checkboxes of the 4th column and set their "Export Value" to 4.

6. And so on…

Since checkboxes on a row have the same name and a different "Export Value" they will act as radio-buttons.

If you need them to act as checkboxes (multi select), create the first row with 4 (or more) checkboxes with 4 different names, select all and use "Create Multiple Copies" to create columns.

** Add the Shift key to duplicate in a straight line