PDF Forms Using Acrobat® and LiveCycle® Designer Bible

Chapter 4. Creating Form Designs

IN THIS CHAPTER

• Understanding design for PDF forms

• Using authoring tools

• Exporting to PDF

• Modifying form designs

• Setting Initial Views

PDF forms begin with a design. The background text, rules, boxes, graphic images, and design elements are assembled together in an authoring program. This is the first stage for designing PDF forms.

After you complete the form design, the file must be converted to a PDF document. Once converted to PDF, you then open the file in Acrobat and add the form elements that make your form a fillable form.

In this chapter, we look at some tools available to you for creating PDF forms, and we talk about getting your original authoring files to PDF.

Designing PDF Forms

For those who are novice forms designers, the most important thing for you to remember is that Acrobat is not a program where you begin a layout—forms or otherwise. Acrobat was never intended to be an original authoring program. As a matter of fact, Acrobat doesn't have a File

Acrobat does provide a few tools that can aid you with minor touchups for text and image editing, but for the most part, it would be a convoluted task to try to create a form or other layout from scratch in Acrobat.

When creating a new form, you must begin with a file you have already assembled in another program. Just about any program you feel comfortable using for a form design is perfectly acceptable. ...