Interactive PDF - How to create form fields repeat on button-click

[Hed101]

Hello to the board.

Trying to create a form including adress-fields for multiple adresses.

When the user clicks a button, i.e. '+' another field-set for another adress is supposed to show up.

How can this be achieved ?

Googled quite some time on this issue but couldn't find anything. In the CMS-world this would be called repater-fields I guess.

Thanks in advance.

[Dave Merchant]

Forms that can "expand" themselves is a feature of XFA (LiveCycle) documents, not of static PDFs. They can be created in LiveCycle Designer - this used to be included with Acrobat but is now an enterprise product.

https://www.adobe.com/products/livecycle/tools/designer.html

[Hed101]

Thanks for the quick reply. So there's no other way to achieve this with Abobe products besides getting the LiveCycle Designer ?

Could you link me to a tutorial or anything covering the usecase please ?

[Dave Merchant]

Not if you want the ability for the form to add/remove fields dynamically. Acrobat's forms can only do very basic things like disabling/enabling a field, they cannot change the page layout. XFA forms may have the same PDF file extension, but internally they are chunks of software that create the page dynamically when the document opens, and so they can change it in response to user actions. They also support more varied types of field, and are designed to talk to a LiveCycle server for high-volume submission of data. The IRS uses XFA forms, for example.

One important caveat is that an XFA PDF can only be opened in Acrobat or Adobe Reader, and even then it is a read-only document. These days many people use the PDF rendering engines built into web browsers, or view files on mobile apps. They don't work with XFA.

[Hed101]

Thanks for the clarifications.

Could you point me to a LifeCycle-doc or tutorial covering this case to get an idea of how this works ?

Where can I find a trial of the LiveCycle Designer then ?

[BobLevine]

It’s an enterprise only product. If you can tell us more about this project and how it will be used perhaps we can offer alternatives.

[Hed101]

Rather simple, regularly needing PDF-forms, often for multiple adresses, which would make it really handy

to use this feature. Alternatives would be appreciated!

[Dave Merchant]

If submissions are online, just use HTML. Simple, accessible, works everywhere.

If it has to be a PDF then the only non-XFA option is to include all the duplicate fields (e.g. in a big table) and leave the recipient to fill in as many as they want. Your processing software can just ignore blank values.

[Jeffrey_Smith]

Alternatives would be appreciated!

jotform.com

[Derek Cross]

Interactive pdf forms are only suitable for simple interactions, such as text fields and simple hyperlinks. Because of the variety of devices and readers anything else may not work.

Read more here: It's okay to say no to interactive PDF