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Last updated on
21 Dec 2023
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Also applies to Adobe Acrobat 2017, Adobe Acrobat 2020
- Acrobat User Guide
- Introduction to Acrobat
- Workspace
- Workspace basics
- Opening and viewing PDFs
- Working with online storage accounts
- Acrobat and macOS
- Acrobat notifications
- Grids, guides, and measurements in PDFs
- Asian, Cyrillic, and right-to-left text in PDFs
- Workspace basics
- Creating PDFs
- Editing PDFs
- Edit text in PDFs
- Edit images or objects in a PDF
- Rotate, move, delete, and renumber PDF pages
- Edit scanned PDFs
- Enhance document photos captured using a mobile camera
- Optimizing PDFs
- PDF properties and metadata
- Links and attachments in PDFs
- PDF layers
- Page thumbnails and bookmarks in PDFs
- PDFs converted to web pages
- Setting up PDFs for a presentation
- PDF articles
- Geospatial PDFs
- Applying actions and scripts to PDFs
- Change the default font for adding text
- Delete pages from a PDF
- Scan and OCR
- Forms
- PDF forms basics
- Create a form from scratch in Acrobat
- Create and distribute PDF forms
- Fill in PDF forms
- PDF form field properties
- Fill and sign PDF forms
- Setting action buttons in PDF forms
- Publishing interactive PDF web forms
- PDF form field basics
- PDF barcode form fields
- Collect and manage PDF form data
- About forms tracker
- PDF forms help
- Send PDF forms to recipients using email or an internal server
- Combining files
- Combine or merge files into single PDF
- Rotate, move, delete, and renumber PDF pages
- Add headers, footers, and Bates numbering to PDFs
- Crop PDF pages
- Add watermarks to PDFs
- Add backgrounds to PDFs
- Working with component files in a PDF Portfolio
- Publish and share PDF Portfolios
- Overview of PDF Portfolios
- Create and customize PDF Portfolios
- Sharing, reviews, and commenting
- Share and track PDFs online
- Mark up text with edits
- Preparing for a PDF review
- Starting a PDF review
- Hosting shared reviews on SharePoint or Office 365 sites
- Participating in a PDF review
- Add comments to PDFs
- Adding a stamp to a PDF
- Approval workflows
- Managing comments | view, reply, print
- Importing and exporting comments
- Tracking and managing PDF reviews
- Saving and exporting PDFs
- Security
- Enhanced security setting for PDFs
- Securing PDFs with passwords
- Manage Digital IDs
- Securing PDFs with certificates
- Opening secured PDFs
- Removing sensitive content from PDFs
- Setting up security policies for PDFs
- Choosing a security method for PDFs
- Security warnings when a PDF opens
- Securing PDFs with Adobe Experience Manager
- Protected View feature for PDFs
- Overview of security in Acrobat and PDFs
- JavaScripts in PDFs as a security risk
- Attachments as security risks
- Allow or block links in PDFs
- Electronic signatures
- Sign PDF documents
- Capture your signature on mobile and use it everywhere
- Send documents for e-signatures
- Create a web form
- Request e-signatures in bulk
- Collect online payments
- Brand your account
- About certificate signatures
- Certificate-based signatures
- Validating digital signatures
- Adobe Approved Trust List
- Manage trusted identities
- Printing
- Accessibility, tags, and reflow
- Searching and indexing
- Multimedia and 3D models
- Add audio, video, and interactive objects to PDFs
- Adding 3D models to PDFs (Acrobat Pro)
- Displaying 3D models in PDFs
- Interacting with 3D models
- Measuring 3D objects in PDFs
- Setting 3D views in PDFs
- Enable 3D content in PDF
- Adding multimedia to PDFs
- Commenting on 3D designs in PDFs
- Playing video, audio, and multimedia formats in PDFs
- Add comments to videos
- Print production tools (Acrobat Pro)
- Preflight (Acrobat Pro)
- PDF/X-, PDF/A-, and PDF/E-compliant files
- Preflight profiles
- Advanced preflight inspections
- Preflight reports
- Viewing preflight results, objects, and resources
- Output intents in PDFs
- Correcting problem areas with the Preflight tool
- Automating document analysis with droplets or preflight actions
- Analyzing documents with the Preflight tool
- Additional checks in the Preflight tool
- Preflight libraries
- Preflight variables
- Color management
About web forms
PDF forms are a helpful way to gather and submit information online. They work by using button actions that perform functions similar to HTML scripting macros. To collect and send the data to a database, you'll need a Common Gateway Interface (CGI) application on your web server. Any existing CGI application that gathers data from forms in HTML, FDF, or XML format can be utilized.
Before making your forms ready for the web, ensure that your form-field names match those in the CGI application.
Note:
Adobe Acrobat does not cover the creation of CGI scripts, and they must be built separately outside of the Acrobat software.
Submit web forms
To send form data, like scanned images or files, via email or to a web server, use the "Submit A Form" action by providing a URL. The submit button enables you to send the entire form data along with any attached files to a server or database with ease.
If your PDF form contains an email-based submit button, you can use the Distribute workflow to facilitate distributing the form to others.
Follow these steps to enable the ' Send a form' button:
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Open a PDF document and then from the All tools menu, select Prepare a form.
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On the page that opens, select Create form.
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From the left panel, select Button and then position the button coordinates where you want to place the button.
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Double click the button and then set the button properties as follows:
- Select Actions tab and then from the Select Trigger drop-down menu, select Mouse Up.
- From the Select Action drop-down menu, select Submit a form.
- Select Add.
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In the Submit Form Selections dialog box, type a url in the Enter a URL for this link field.
To send the form data to a web server, enter the destination URL.
To send the form data to an email address, enter mailto: followed by the email address. For example, type mailto:nobody@adobe.com.
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Select one of the following Export Format options:
- FDF: You can select one or more of the available options: user-entered data, comments, and incremental changes to the PDF file. The Incremental Changes To The PDF option is useful for exporting a digital signature in a way a server can easily read and reconstruct.
Note: If the server returns data to the user in FDF or XFDF format, the server’s URL must end with the #FDF suffix—for example, http://myserver/cgi-bin/myscript#FDF.
- HTML: Exports as an HTML file.
- XFDF: Exports as an XML file. You can choose to export the form fields data, comments, or both.
- PDF The complete document: Exports the entire PDF file that is your form. It creates a larger file than the FDF option but the option is useful for preserving digital signatures.
Note:If the users that fill in the PDF form are using Adobe Reader, you must choose either FDF or XFDF for the Export Format option.
- FDF: You can select one or more of the available options: user-entered data, comments, and incremental changes to the PDF file. The Incremental Changes To The PDF option is useful for exporting a digital signature in a way a server can easily read and reconstruct.
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Specify the Field Selection and date format as required. Once done, select Ok.
- All fields: Exports all form fields even if the form fields do not contain values.
- Only these: Exports only the form fields you specify by clicking Select Fields and indicating which form fields to include and whether you want to include empty fields.
- Convert dates to standard format: Exports all form dates in a single format, regardless of how they are entered in the form.
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Change other settings on the Button Properties dialog box as required, and then select Close.
Reset web forms
The 'Reset a form' button can clear all data entered in the form, just like the "All tools > Prepare a form > More > Clear form" feature available when creating and editing Acrobat forms. But, with the reset button, you can clear specific fields if needed.
Follow these steps to enable the 'Reset A form' button:
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Open a PDF document and then from the All tools menu, select Prepare a form.
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On the page that opens, select Create form.
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From the left panel, select Button and then position the button coordinates where you want to place the button.
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Double click the button and then set the button properties as follows:
- Select Actions tab and then from the Select Trigger drop-down menu, select Mouse Up.
- From the Select Action drop-down menu, select Reset a form.
- Select Add.
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In the Reset a form dialog box:
- Select check boxes for specific fields or choose Select All.
- Select Ok.
The list in the Actions tab now shows 'Reset a form' nested under the Mouse Up action.
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Change other settings on the Button Properties dialog box as required, and then select Close.
Import web forms data
The 'Import form data' action allow you to fill out common form fields, such as name and email, by importing data from another form. Additionally, you can use the Import form data feature to auto-fill those fields with your personal profile information. Only matching form fields get updated, while non-matching ones are ignored. Before setting up the 'Import form data' action, ensure you have a form with the common information fields from which data will be exported.
Follow these steps to enable 'Import form data' button:
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From the All tools menu, select Prepare a form and then on the page that opens, select Create form.
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From the left panel, select Button and then position the button coordinates where you want to place the button.
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Double click the button and then set the button properties as follows:
- Select Actions tab and then from the Select Trigger drop-down menu, select Mouse Up.
- From the Select Action drop-down menu, select Import form data.
- Select Add.
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Locate and select an FDF file and then select Open.
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Change other settings on the Button Properties dialog box as required, and then select Close.
Note:The Import Form Data action searches for the data file from which to import data in different locations in Windows than on Mac OS. In Windows, the Import Form Data action searches the Acrobat or Acrobat Reader folder, the current folder, the System folder, the Windows folder, My Documents\Adobe\Acrobat, and the folders that are in the PATH statement. On Mac OS, the Import Form Data action searches the Acrobat or Acrobat Reader folder and the System Preferences folder.
CGI export values
An export value is the information sent to a CGI application to identify a user-selected form field. You need to define an export value only if the following conditions are met:
The data is collected electronically in a database over a company intranet or the web.
The data is different from the item designated by the form field, or the form field is a radio button.
When defining export values, follow these guidelines:
For check boxes or radio buttons, use the default export value (Yes) to indicate selection.
For drop-down lists, provide an export value only if it needs to differ from the listed item, like matching a database field name. If no explicit export value is entered, the selected item serves as the export value.
Related radio buttons must share the same form field name but have different export values. This enables proper toggling and ensures accurate data collection in the database.