Adobe Acrobat 7 TIPS and TRICKS THE 100150 BEST [Electronic resources]

Donna L. Baker; Kristin Kalning; Becky Morgan; Judy Ziajka

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  • TIP 70: Completing a Form and Using Auto-Complete

    In Acrobat 7, users can fill in a form and submit the actual form (or just the data it contains) to a database, Web site, or email address. Acrobat lets users save the completed form, save the content to reuse another time, or print the contents. You can even set preferences to have Acrobat assist your users by suggesting information used in similar form fields. If you fill out the same type of form numerous times, such as health or dental insurance, reusing the information saves a lot of time.

    Filling Out Forms

    To fill out an Acrobat PDF form, you move the pointer inside a field on the form and click. You'll see the I-beam, which tells you that the form is active and that you can start to type. Other types of fields using buttons, checkmarks, and so on show variations of the Hand tool, such as a pointing hand. Click an option to select it, and then press Tab (or Shift+Tab) to go to the next (or previous) field. When you have finished, click the Submit button, if it exists. Alternatively, you can print the form, or export the data to a separate file, depending on your rights.

    When you start filling out a new form, you'll see a dialog that suggests using Acrobat's Auto-Complete feature to help fill in the form fields more quickly. When you use this feature, as soon as you type the first few characters of a word in a form field, if the characters match what you have entered in another form, Acrobat automatically enters the rest of the text (Figure 70a). The automatic text is selected; you can easily delete or change it if you need to.

    Figure 70a. You can choose from a list of matching field entries when you use the Auto-Complete feature

    To enable this feature, choose Edit > Preferences (Windows) or Acrobat > Preferences (Mac OS), and choose Forms from the Preferences list. At the lower part of the window, you see the Auto-Complete options. Click the pull-down arrow and choose an option. Your choices are Off, Basic, and Advanced. Make your selection, and also specify whether you want Acrobat to retain numerical data like phone numbers. Then click OK to close the dialog.

    The Basic Auto-Complete process suggests choices when you start typing an entry. A pull-down list offers probable choices; the option listed first appears in the field automatically. In the example shown in Figure 70, the names starting with D are displayed as soon as I type the letter D. If you want to choose another name, click that name to select it from the list.

    The Advanced Auto-Complete feature takes the process one step further. Once you start typing and see the auto-entry list, simply move your pointer over the choice you want to use and press Tab. Acrobat fills the field with the selection you specified and moves the pointer to the next field.

    To remove entries from the auto-entry listing, click Edit Entry List below the Auto-Complete options in the Forms preferences dialog to open the Edit Entry List dialog. Select the entries you don't want on the list, and click Remove to delete them. To delete the entire list, click Remove All.

    Other Preferences for Forms

    Acrobat provides several other preferences for forms. Try some of the optionsyou may find that they increase your form's processing speed and make working with forms simpler.

    Choose Edit > Preferences > Forms (on Mac, Acrobat > Preferences > Forms). The top portion of the resulting dialog contains a set of forms preferences:

    • Automatically calculate field values Calculates the content of numerical fields when you enter the data. Often this feature is programmed into the form.

    • Show focus rectangle Shows which form field is currently active (or has focus). This is a very useful preference especially in forms that have narrow fields or a great deal of information on one page (Figure 70b)

      Figure 70b. When you move your pointer over a field you automatically see which field is active when the focus rectangle option is used. In the figure, the field showing "14" is below my pointer and outlined.

    • Keep forms data temporarily available on disk Retains the information you add to a form online. This is a useful preference if you fill in forms over the Internet; you can't store the data permanently, but you can reuse it during a session.

    • Show text field overflow indicator Displays a plus sign when you try to type too much text into a text field. The number of characters allowed in a field is defined by the form's designer (Figure 70c)

      Figure 70c. You can instantly see if a user has typed more text into a field than you allowed in the form field's design when you specify using the text overflow indicator

    • Always hide forms document message bar Hides the message bar that displays by default when you open a PDF form. Use this setting when you work with forms regularly; closing the message bar gives you a bit more room on the screen (Figure 70d).

      Figure 70d. Save precious screen real estate by hiding the form's document message bar

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    • Highlight Color Displays color for form field backgrounds and borders when your user clicks the Show Highlight check box on the Document Message Bar. Click the color swatches in the Highlight Color section of the preference pane to choose colors that highlight both field backgrounds, as well as required fields. The color appears in required form fields only when a user submits the form. The fields in a form are highlighted in whatever color you specify in the preferences (Figure 70e).

      Figure 70e. Set a preference to automatically color all the fields you can use in a formnow you can clearly see how much work you have to do!

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    These are useful preferences when you work with a lot of forms and find screen glare hard on your eyes, or when you work with large forms and want to see how much work you have left. You can use colored backgrounds for the form fields regardless of how the form is designed; the form's designer doesn't have to assign a color.