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 71: Collecting Form Data

You've created your form, and now you want to circulate it to your users, giving them an email Submit button to return information to you. Then what do you do? Two thingsfirst create a workflow to manage the form's distribution, and then create a way to store and display the information. In this example, I'll show you how to use a spreadsheet.

Speed It Up

If you are working on a project and are adding content to a spreadsheet repeatedly, rather than selecting files manually, just click the Include most recent list of data files to export data from option when you are configuring the content for the spreadsheet in the Export Data From Multiple Forms dialog.

Acrobat provides a data collection workflow so you can control the process:

Click the Forms task button and choose Initiate Form Data Collection Workflow from the pull-down menu, or choose Advanced > Forms > Initiate Form Data Collection Workflow, or File > Form Data > Initiate Form Data Collection Workflow.

The Workflow wizard opens. Proceed through the three screens in the dialog:

The first pane explains the process. Click Next.
In the second pane, invite recipients by typing their email addresses or click Address Book to open your email program's address book and select recipients. Click Next.
In the third, and final pane, preview the email message (Figure 71a). You can click the fields to modify the message or subject. Click Send Invitation.
Figure 71a. Use the wizard to set up a workflow for form distribution and data gathering.

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The wizard dialog closes, and the invitations and forms are emailed.

How Do You Spell…?

You can use Acrobat or Adobe Reader to spell-check text you type on a form. First check the dictionary by choosing Edit > Check Spelling > Edit Dictionary and choose the language you want to use. Then choose Edit > Check Spelling > In Comments and Form Fields if you are working in Acrobat; in a Web browser, click the Spell Check button on the Edit toolbar. Click Start to begin the spell check. Words not contained in your dictionary are listed as Word Not Found. When the spell check is complete, go through the list and make corrections. Acrobat provides suggested corrections.

When your recipients receive the form, they complete it and click the Submit button to email the results back to you. Depending on the format you chose when you created the form, the data returns in XML, FDF, PDF, or XFDF formats. As you receive responses, save them in a folder.

Now it's time to build a spreadsheet to display the results:

Click the Forms task button and choose Create Spreadsheet From Data Files, or select the command from the File > Form Data menu to open the Export Data From Multiple Forms dialog.

Click Add Files; the Select File Containing Form Data dialog opens. Locate the folder you created to store the form data, and select the files you want to incorporate into the spreadsheet. Click Select to close the dialog, and the list now appears in the Export Data From Multiple Forms dialog (Figure 71b).

Figure 71b. Choose the results you want to include in the spreadsheet.

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Click Create Spreadsheet. In the dialog that opens, locate the folder on your hard drive where you want to store the spreadsheet and then click Save.

When the process is complete, the Complete dialog displays; click View Spreadsheet Now to open Excel, or click Close and View Later.

The spreadsheet generated by the sample project used in this tip is shown in Figure 71c. Several of the columns are collapsed to show you more of the content. You can see values from radio buttons displayed, as well as content from text fields.

Figure 71c. You can export the data directly to a spreadsheet for viewing