There are various ways to create a PDF form. If a PDF file already exists from which you want to create a form, open it and use the form tools for further editing.
You can also click on the Create form task on the start screen.
A window now appears in which you must first choose whether you want to create the form from scratch, from a template or from an existing file - this can be a PDF file, an Office file such as Word or Excel or even a scanned paper form.
I start with the From existing document option.
In this case, click on Browse in the next window and select the relevant file on the hard disk. This can be either a PDF or an Office file.
Then click on Next.
The document is now opened and Acrobat has already performed a form field recognition, i.e. the places where entries are obviously to be made are immediately equipped with form fields.
Close the displayed status message by clicking OK.
Acrobat now enables access to the document. All areas recognized as form fields are marked with frames. There is now a bar for form editing on the right-hand side and a selection of quick tools for adding text and option fields, checkboxes, buttons etc. at the top. The recognized fields are all listed individually in the form editing bar.
When zooming in, you can see that Acrobat has already named the form fields correctly with the preceding text. To make the document graphically appealing and clear, the fields can be aligned uniformly.
To do this, select them all together with the selection tool and select the corresponding entry from the right mouse button context menu under Align, distribute or center, in this case Align left.
In the context menu under Properties>Position, you can also assign uniform values for alignment and size for all selected form fields.
To edit the radio buttons, select the corresponding tool from the quick tools bar and draw a frame at the corresponding position. Write a name for the specific option in the radio button selection field and a name for the group below it.
As there must always be at least two option fields in order to be able to make a selection between them, click on Add another button and drag the next option field using the crosshairs on the mouse.
To check the result, click on Preview at the top. The edit view is now hidden and the form view is shown. On mouseover, the group name of the option fields you have just created is displayed and you can check their functionality.
To adjust the size, select the fields and choose the entry Same size for all fields>Both in the context menu.
You can determine how the form fields are displayed via the Properties>Options context menu. Here you can select the desired entry for the selected fields from the drop-down menu Check box style.
To insert a new form field, e.g. in places that were not recognized correctly, select Add new field either from the quick tools or the form editing bar and mark the area intended for this.
The elements of a drop-down list are entered individually in the form field properties under Options and confirmed by clicking on Add. The order of selected entries can be subsequently changed using the Move up or Move down buttons. If you activate the Sort elements checkbox, an alphabetical sequence is created.
An existing digital signature can be inserted using a special signature field. However, the signature field identified during form field recognition is initially only a pure text field with the designation Signature.
To create the signature functionality, first select and delete this field. Then select the Add digital signature form tool from the quick toolbar and draw a new frame. This contains a red marker in the top left-hand corner.
To check the functionality, switch to preview mode and then click on the signature field. The stored digital signature is displayed and after entering the password, clicking on Sign and saving the document, the signature is inserted.
Finally, you can create a button to send the form back by email. To do this, select the button tool from the quick toolbar and use it to draw a frame. Enter a name such as Send and then click on All properties.
Now open the Select action drop-down list in the Actions tab and select the Send form entry. Then click on the Add button.
In the window that opens, the recipient address must be entered in the line Enter URL for link. The address must be preceded by the prefix mailto:.
You can then specify whether all or only certain form fields, the entire PDF document or the FDF data should be sent. FDF files are significantly smaller than the entire PDF file, but still contain all the information. The recipient can easily open them with Acrobat.
Then click OK and close the Properties window.
Now switch to the preview. When you click on the newly created Send button, your email client will open with the PDF or FDF file attached.
The recipient, subject and a standard text have already been entered and the form can be sent by clicking on Send.
