Adobe® Acrobat® 8 PDF Bible

Chapter 34. Understanding Acrobat Form Tools

IN THIS CHAPTER

• Defining PDF forms

• Filling-in PDF forms

• Understanding forms editing

• Setting field properties

• Managing fields

• Creating PDF forms

• Working with the Fields panel

In the last chapter, I covered creating forms using Adobe LiveCycle Designer. Unfortunately, Adobe Designer is one of the only features covered in this book that isn't available to Mac people. If you're a Mac person, you may have felt left out while reading Chapter 33. But don't despair. There are plenty of forms features still available for both Macintosh and Windows users in Acrobat 8.

Adobe PDF forms are created in Acrobat Professional using the form tools and many commands for creating a different kind of form. XML forms are created in Adobe Designer and Acrobat PDF forms are created in Acrobat Professional. In some cases, an Acrobat PDF form might be preferred over an XML form. These two forms types are distinctive in both the creation process and for the intended use.

In this chapter, you learn how to use the form tools in Acrobat to create Acrobat PDF forms. The good news is you can create PDF forms in Acrobat on either Windows or the Macintosh.

Note

Creating, modifying, and working with form fields require the use of Acrobat Professional. Acrobat Standard does not support creating or editing PDF forms.

Setting Up the Environment

Working with PDF forms requires the use of the form tools. To open the Forms toolbar, open a context menu on the Toolbar Well and select More Tools ...