1. Designing FormsChoosing a design application| 00:00 | How do you decide between creating a form as
an HTML form and creating form as a PDF form?
| | 00:06 | Well, if you're comfortable in an HTML
Editor such as Dreamweaver, you might
| | 00:09 | like to create a Web Form.
| | 00:11 | So here's an HTML version
of a form. It's fillable.
| | 00:14 | You can see the Name, Address, City field,
radio buttons, Reset and Submit buttons.
| | 00:20 | But what if you're not comfortable in
Web editors, but you're comfortable in
| | 00:23 | other programs such as Microsoft Word
or Adobe Illustrator and Adobe InDesign?
| | 00:28 | Well, then you're probably going to
like to create your underlying artwork in
| | 00:32 | that familiar application, convert it
to a PDF, and then take it into Adobe
| | 00:36 | Acrobat and add the interactive form fields.
| | 00:39 | And here's another thing to consider.
| | 00:41 | If in your organization people are
accustomed to time-honored paper forms
| | 00:45 | that they filled out for years, it's
much easier to replicate that as a PDF
| | 00:49 | than it is as a Web Form.
| | 00:51 | Any application that can produce a
PDF can be used to create the substrate
| | 00:55 | or artwork for a form.
| | 00:57 | You can even use pen and ink and
draw the form, you can scan a piece of
| | 01:00 | paperwork to make the form.
| | 01:02 | But we're going to consider the
features of Microsoft Word, Adobe Illustrator,
| | 01:06 | and Adobe InDesign for
creating underlying artwork.
| | 01:09 | Naturally, you're going to be most
comfortable in the application you know
| | 01:12 | best, but it's a good idea to look at some
of the options in all these popular programs.
| | 01:17 | And if you've created hyperlinks or
buttons or added multimedia content in your
| | 01:21 | original application, you want to make
sure such features are retained when you
| | 01:24 | generate the PDF on which you're going
to be building your form, and I'll show
| | 01:28 | you how to make sure that happens.
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| Designing forms in Word| 00:00 | Here in the finished form, you can see
that there are lines next to Last Name
| | 00:04 | and First Name and Address and so forth.
| | 00:06 | There are some little squares that
will become checkboxes in the Acrobat form
| | 00:10 | and some little circles that will
become radio buttons in the Acrobat form.
| | 00:13 | The differences between checkboxes and
radio buttons, you'll see later on, but
| | 00:18 | quickly, checkboxes let you choose
multiple choices, radio buttons are
| | 00:22 | mutually exclusive.
| | 00:23 | They can pick only Yes or No, they
can't say Yes and No or we don't know they
| | 00:26 | are going to show up.
| | 00:28 | So let's take a look at the
beginning of this file and see how these
| | 00:31 | features are added.
| | 00:33 | I'm not trying to teach you Microsoft
Word, I'm just trying to give you some
| | 00:36 | tips for creating these features
that didn't pay off in the PDF.
| | 00:40 | So how to create those lines?
| | 00:41 | Well, you could press the Underscore
button a bunch of times, but, A. that's
| | 00:45 | no fun, and B. it's really
not the cool way to do this.
| | 00:48 | There is a more
controllable way by using tab stops.
| | 00:51 | So I'm going to highlight
all of these paragraphs.
| | 00:54 | Don't worry that it's selecting
the artwork on the lower right;
| | 00:56 | that really doesn't come into play,
and I'm going to create tab stops.
| | 01:00 | So I'm going to go up here to Paragraph,
I'm going to choose the Tabs option.
| | 01:04 | And if you were starting from scratch,
you'd have to experiment a bit to see
| | 01:07 | what the proper tab stop number would be.
| | 01:10 | I'm going to cheat because I already know.
| | 01:12 | I want this to finish out at the 7.5 inch mark.
| | 01:15 | I want to make sure it includes the Tab Leader.
| | 01:17 | So notice down here under Leader, I'm
checking this fourth option for Underscore,
| | 01:22 | I'm going to click Set, and then OK,
and we'll see what we have. There is my line.
| | 01:26 | I pushed my Last Name off the page, but
that's okay, I'm going to come back and
| | 01:30 | clean that up later.
| | 01:31 | But notice next to Address, I
haven't yet pressed the Tab key.
| | 01:34 | Watch what happens when I do.
| | 01:36 | See, it creates that line for me,
and because I formatted all of these
| | 01:40 | paragraphs with that same Tab Stop,
you'll see that they all have that nice line.
| | 01:45 | My artwork here is getting in the way a
little bit, so I'm going to push it out of the way.
| | 01:49 | See, now my lines all line up.
| | 01:51 | That's much more fun than pressing
that Underscore key repeatedly.
| | 01:54 | But now I have to go back
and clean up a little bit.
| | 01:57 | I'm going to go back to this first
paragraph and I'm going to add a second Tab
| | 02:00 | Stop that's going to finish
out my little First Name line.
| | 02:04 | Again, I'm cheating, I know that if I
press 4.25, that's going to work just fine.
| | 02:09 | I have to remember to check this
number 4 option for Leader, Set, click OK.
| | 02:14 | You notice there is not a line after Last Name.
| | 02:16 | That's because I hadn't pressed the Tab
key, but watch what happens when I do.
| | 02:20 | See, everything lines up. Isn't that great?
| | 02:22 | That's way easier than
pressing that Underscore.
| | 02:25 | Now I want to finish out
my City, State, and Zip.
| | 02:27 | I'm going to click after City, hit my
Tab key, and of course, it's going to mess
| | 02:32 | everything up, but that's all right.
| | 02:33 | I'm going to press my Tab key after
State, it's going to shut that Zip all
| | 02:37 | the way off the page.
| | 02:38 | But when I change my tab stops,
everything will come back into place.
| | 02:42 | So when I go back to Tabs,
I'm going to have to guess.
| | 02:45 | I know that that 4.25 will work well
for City, so I choose my 4 Leader, I click
| | 02:51 | Set, and there we go.
| | 02:53 | I'm going to add another Tab Stop at
about the 5.5 inch mark, and I think that
| | 02:56 | will work, again with an
Underscore, for my City.
| | 03:00 | So let's see what we have.
| | 03:02 | There's my City, there's
my State, there's my Zip.
| | 03:04 | Everything is nice and even.
| | 03:07 | Now I would have to come under Sessions
and add my little checkboxes, so I need
| | 03:10 | some little squares.
| | 03:11 | So I'm going to choose the Insert
menu here, go over to Symbol, there is a
| | 03:16 | square right there, I could use that one.
| | 03:18 | But what if I want
something a little more dimensional?
| | 03:20 | Well, I press More Symbols and here there is
a nice dimensional square. I'll use that one.
| | 03:25 | When I click Insert, you
can see the square appear.
| | 03:28 | And I don't need to do that over-and-over again;
| | 03:30 | I can just highlight that little
square, copy it with a Ctrl+C or a
| | 03:34 | right-click, or a Command+C of course
on the Mac, and then I can just paste,
| | 03:39 | paste, and there we go.
| | 03:42 | Now under Will you be attending the
Tasting Party, I don't want little squares,
| | 03:45 | I want something that looks like radio buttons.
| | 03:47 | So I'm going to click to the left of
the word Yes, I'm going to go back up
| | 03:51 | to Symbols, choose More Symbols,
but that's going to be hard to find a
| | 03:55 | little circle like I want.
| | 03:57 | So notice that it says Font:
| | 03:58 | (normal text), I can pick from any
font I have active on my computer.
| | 04:02 | So I'm going to go down to Wingdings and
see if I can't find a nice circle there.
| | 04:07 | There we go!
| | 04:07 | There is one with a little depth, I'm
going to choose Insert, and Close, and I'm
| | 04:12 | going to do the same thing
I did with the checkboxes.
| | 04:14 | I'm going to highlight that and copy it,
click before the word No, and paste it.
| | 04:19 | Now when I finish this form in Microsoft
Word, it's time to convert it to a PDF.
| | 04:23 | There is a little difference between the
process on the Mac and the process on Windows.
| | 04:28 | It's a little bit easier on Windows.
| | 04:30 | On the Mac, it's a Print feature.
| | 04:32 | You choose File>Print and in that Print
dialog, you'll see the option to Save as PDF.
| | 04:37 | There's some interactivity that
Windows will carry through into a PDF that it
| | 04:42 | doesn't carry through on a Mac.
| | 04:44 | It's just one of those things
we kind of have to live with it.
| | 04:46 | But here on Windows, you're going to
see something in your menu that's created
| | 04:50 | because Acrobat has been
installed later than Office.
| | 04:53 | So when you install Acrobat, it puts
some macros into Word and also PowerPoint
| | 04:58 | and Excel that make it
easy for you to make a PDF.
| | 05:01 | So when I click Acrobat up
here, I get my Acrobat Options.
| | 05:05 | First I'm going to choose Preferences
and we'll take a look briefly at some
| | 05:08 | of these preferences.
| | 05:09 | A lot of them don't affect your forms.
| | 05:11 | Some of them are sort of superfluous
and we'll see what it's safe to turn off.
| | 05:15 | It might be nice to see my PDF when I'm done,
so I'm going to check View Adobe PDF result.
| | 05:21 | This option to Prompt for the Adobe PDF
file name is kind of nice because, A. it
| | 05:25 | lets you name it, and B. it lets you
find out where it's going to save it.
| | 05:28 | Sometimes it's easy to lose
them if you don't have this check.
| | 05:32 | If you had added document information
under properties, something like your
| | 05:36 | author name or a date or a project name,
that gets carried through if you check this.
| | 05:42 | Down here under Application Settings,
you could attach your Word file to the PDF.
| | 05:46 | It doesn't really make sense in this case.
| | 05:48 | There really isn't any need to create
bookmarks, so we're not going to check that.
| | 05:52 | If I created hyperlinks, I want to make
sure those carry through by checking Add Links.
| | 05:56 | And if you ever have to accede to
something called Section 508 which is all
| | 06:01 | about accessibility for people who
are visually-impaired, you might want to
| | 06:05 | check this Enable Accessibility option.
| | 06:08 | It adds a little bit to the file size
but it also adds some flexibility into the
| | 06:11 | file that pays off in Acrobat.
| | 06:13 | Let's take a look at Security.
| | 06:15 | If you want to add a password to this
so that not everybody can open it up,
| | 06:19 | you could check that.
| | 06:20 | I'm not going to because I'm not that paranoid.
| | 06:23 | Under Word, if I had any footnotes
and endnote links, again, these are not
| | 06:27 | going to be pertinent in this file
because it's really not a long document with
| | 06:30 | a lot of stuff like that.
| | 06:32 | But you'll find that if these are checked,
because maybe a previous session, you
| | 06:36 | can uncheck them and you save
yourself a little time in processing.
| | 06:40 | Under Bookmarks, I'm not going to convert
my Word Headings to Bookmarks or any of that.
| | 06:44 | So all of these are for documents,
usually long documents, and you want to
| | 06:48 | maintain some interactivity.
| | 06:50 | They really aren't pertinent for this file.
| | 06:52 | So generally speaking, you can just
check the few things here and then click OK.
| | 06:56 | But I still don't have a PDF.
| | 06:58 | Those are just the preferences.
| | 07:00 | Now to actually make that PDF, when I
check Create PDF, it says I need to save
| | 07:05 | the file before continuing.
| | 07:06 | You may or may not see this depending
if you've done something to the file and
| | 07:09 | not saved it before you
embarked on making a PDF.
| | 07:12 | I'm going to say Yes, I'm going to save it, and
that's how fast it happens. So here's our PDF.
| | 07:19 | It still isn't a fillable form,
that's going to happen later.
| | 07:22 | But look, all my artwork is in place
and that's one of the beauties of PDF.
| | 07:26 | It's always a faithful
rendition of your original artwork.
| | 07:29 | Now it's ready to turn into an interactive PDF.
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| Designing forms in Illustrator| 00:00 | In the finished version of this
Illustrator file, everything is in place.
| | 00:04 | Notice the lines after First
Name, Last Name, and so forth.
| | 00:07 | Those are going to
become text fields in Acrobat.
| | 00:10 | The little squares are going to become
checkboxes and the little radio buttons
| | 00:14 | are going to be created
from these little circles.
| | 00:16 | I also have some cute little buttons at the top.
| | 00:18 | So where does all this stuff come from?
| | 00:20 | Well, first the lines.
| | 00:22 | I'm going to turn on my invisible characters.
| | 00:24 | I'm going to go to Type>Show Hidden
Characters so that you can see that each one
| | 00:29 | of these lines is actually
a separate little paragraph.
| | 00:32 | To create the lines, I could use my Line
Tool, I could click in here and I could
| | 00:36 | press my Underscore key a bunch of times.
| | 00:38 | But a far easier way to do it
is to use tab stops and leaders.
| | 00:42 | So I'm going to select all of
these paragraphs and I'm going to go to
| | 00:46 | Window>Type, and Tabs.
| | 00:50 | A little Tab Ruler shows up.
| | 00:52 | I'm going to make sure that any
existing tab stops are cleared out so that I
| | 00:56 | get a nice clean start.
| | 00:57 | I have four kinds of tab stops:
| | 01:00 | Left, Center, Right, and Decimal tabs.
| | 01:03 | I want the Right-Justified Tab.
| | 01:05 | So I'm going to click over here around
at the 7-inch mark, I'm probably going to
| | 01:09 | modify that later, but this gives me a start.
| | 01:12 | Notice that there is
something already in the Leader field.
| | 01:15 | That's just left over from our previous session.
| | 01:18 | But that's all you have to do, is just
put one little Underscore in there.
| | 01:21 | You don't have to put in a bunch;
| | 01:22 | Illustrator is going to repeat them.
| | 01:24 | Why don't I see any lines yet?
| | 01:26 | Well, that's because there are
no tab characters in the text.
| | 01:29 | So when I click after Last Name and
press the Tab key, now I have a line and on
| | 01:35 | the Address line, all the way through
because each one of these paragraphs has
| | 01:39 | that Tab Stop position and it has
that Leader attached to that position.
| | 01:43 | That's pretty good, but I need to
modify this paragraph and this paragraph
| | 01:47 | because I have other
little pieces that need lines.
| | 01:49 | So I'm going to click in the first
paragraph and I'm just going to guess at
| | 01:54 | putting a new Tab Stop about there
and then I'm going to press my Tab key.
| | 01:59 | Notice the Leader character is still in there,
sort of gives me a head start. There we go!
| | 02:04 | See how nicely they all line up.
| | 02:05 | That would be sort of tough to do
if you're just drawing these lines.
| | 02:09 | In the City, State, ZIP, I'm
going to need a couple of tab stops.
| | 02:13 | So I'm going to again, just sort of guess.
| | 02:15 | That little Tab Leader character is
already in there, and again, that gives me
| | 02:18 | sort of a head start, and there we go! See.
| | 02:22 | Tab stops are really not all that hard.
| | 02:25 | I'm going to dismiss my little
Tab Panel, I don't need it anymore.
| | 02:28 | Now we're going to look at the
section under Sessions where I need little
| | 02:32 | squares for checkboxes and
little circles for radio buttons.
| | 02:35 | I could draw a square, but I
think this is a better way to do this.
| | 02:39 | I'm just going to put my type cursor in
the text just before the C. It might be
| | 02:43 | a little tough to see it
blinking, but it's there.
| | 02:45 | And I'm going to use the
Glyphs Panel, Type>Glyphs.
| | 02:49 | Glyphs are just characters within a typeface.
| | 02:52 | And the Glyphs Panel lets you look
at every character in the typeface to
| | 02:55 | pick what you want.
| | 02:57 | I'm going to choose a dingbat font.
| | 02:59 | In this case, I'm going to use Wingdings.
| | 03:02 | Wingdings has a lot of fun stuff in it.
| | 03:05 | There is a square, but I think maybe I
want one with a little dimension to it,
| | 03:08 | so I'm going to choose this little character.
| | 03:10 | My text cursor is there before the C.
Once I found the character I want to
| | 03:14 | insert in the Glyphs Panel, all I have
to do is double-click, and there we go.
| | 03:19 | And I could do that again,
but I think this is easier.
| | 03:21 | I'll just copy it, put my cursor in
there, and paste and paste. There we go!
| | 03:26 | Under Will you be attending the Tasting
Party, I want to create radio buttons,
| | 03:30 | so I want little circles.
| | 03:31 | I'm going to click before the Yes.
| | 03:34 | It goes back to Myriad Pro because that's
the typeface that's being used for that text.
| | 03:39 | But I'm going to return again to my
Wingdings and there is a little circle with
| | 03:45 | a little depth to it, I'm going to use that.
| | 03:48 | And again, you find the Glyph that you
want, you double-click, and there you go.
| | 03:52 | And I'm going to copy and paste
this, get myself another little radio
| | 03:56 | button, and there we go.
| | 03:59 | What about the buttons?
| | 04:00 | I'm going to give you a quick look at
using symbols to create buttons and I'm
| | 04:04 | going to talk more in depth about that later on.
| | 04:06 | In the Symbols Panel, I already have a
bit of button artwork, I'm just going to
| | 04:10 | drag that into the page.
| | 04:13 | Because it's arrived in the page
later than everything else, it's on top.
| | 04:16 | So I'm going to position it and then
go to Object>Arrange, and Send to Back.
| | 04:22 | And I'm going to just pull on the
corners of the bounding box and make that a
| | 04:26 | little more reasonable size.
| | 04:28 | Illustrator can't create interactive
buttons, that has to happen in Acrobat.
| | 04:33 | I'm going to duplicate this.
| | 04:34 | I can hold down Alt on PC, hold down
Option on the Mac, and just move that over,
| | 04:39 | and now I have my two buttons.
| | 04:41 | What about making a PDF?
| | 04:43 | When I go to File, it's just a Save As function.
| | 04:46 | So File>Save As and I'm just going to
save this as an Adobe PDF and I click Save.
| | 04:53 | The Illustrator default actually
contains the Illustrator file inside a PDF.
| | 04:58 | So to other applications, it looks
like a PDF, but you can roundtrip it back
| | 05:02 | into Illustrator if you need to modify it.
| | 05:04 | So if you think you're going to be
making a lot of revisions to the underlying
| | 05:07 | artwork, you might go for this default.
| | 05:10 | I'm probably going to choose High
Quality Print because I'm going to keep
| | 05:13 | my original document and I'm going to
uncheck Preserve Illustrator Editing Capabilities.
| | 05:18 | Why would I do that?
| | 05:19 | Well, because I'm going to uncheck
Preserve Illustrator Editing Capabilities. Why?
| | 05:24 | Well, because it reduces
file size a fair amount.
| | 05:27 | I'm going to click Save PDF and I get a
little caution saying, are you sure you
| | 05:31 | don't want to preserve
Illustrator Editing Capabilities? No.
| | 05:34 | I'm going to click OK.
| | 05:36 | And there's my PDF.
| | 05:37 | That's how fast it happens.
| | 05:39 | So now you know an easier way to draw
your lines, quick way to get in little
| | 05:42 | pieces like those squares and circles
and also you start to see that there is
| | 05:46 | some great artwork in
Illustrator for creating buttons.
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| Designing forms in InDesign| 00:00 | Here is my finished InDesign file;
| | 00:02 | you'll notice the lines are
already in place, they're going to become
| | 00:05 | text fields in Acrobat.
| | 00:06 | These little squares are going to
become checkboxes and the little circles are
| | 00:09 | going to become radio buttons.
| | 00:11 | One of the cool things about
InDesign is that you can actually add some
| | 00:14 | interactive features in InDesign and
have them already in place when you create
| | 00:19 | your PDF and they survive the trip to PDF.
| | 00:21 | For example, these little objects look
like buttons, and I can turn them into
| | 00:25 | buttons right here InDesign.
| | 00:27 | Although, InDesign doesn't
understand Reset From or Submit Form, I can at
| | 00:31 | least have them be buttons, and then I
can add those, Reset and Submit actions
| | 00:35 | when I get to Acrobat.
| | 00:36 | Anytime you see underlined text, you
tend to think that's a hyperlink, and
| | 00:40 | it's easy to turn this into a live
hyperlink, that again, survives the trip
| | 00:44 | when you export to PDF.
| | 00:46 | So let's see how some of
these things are created.
| | 00:50 | In this document, the starting document,
I am going down to Type and Show Hidden
| | 00:53 | Characters, so that you can see each
one of these lines is actually a separate
| | 00:57 | little paragraph, and I am going to
use Tab characters to create those lines.
| | 01:02 | Now I could draw them with the Line
tool, but that's sort of the long way
| | 01:05 | around, and the better way to do it
is with tabs stops and tab leaders.
| | 01:10 | If you already know how to use tabs in
InDesign this is old hat to you, but I
| | 01:14 | find that a lot of people avoid using tabs,
just because they are not clear on how they work.
| | 01:18 | Maybe I can clear up some mysteries for you.
| | 01:20 | I am going to go up to Type and Tabs
and this little panel appears floating up
| | 01:25 | above my text, and it's where I can
choose Tabs Stop position and where I can
| | 01:30 | include Tab Leaders.
| | 01:32 | If you were just starting out in this
document, you might have to do some guess
| | 01:35 | work to figure out the correct value to
put in the x field, I am going to cheat
| | 01:39 | and put in 71/2, because I just
happen to know that that works.
| | 01:42 | Notice that you have four different
little Tab Stop types, you have Left Align,
| | 01:46 | Center Align, Right Align
and something called Align On;
| | 01:50 | usually used that for decimal, but
really it can Align On any character.
| | 01:54 | I want these lines to all fall at the
same position on the right end, so I
| | 01:58 | am going to use a Right Align Tab Stop,
I am going to click in here, notice
| | 02:03 | this cute little troll line it shows
up, that gives you an idea of where
| | 02:06 | this is going to fall.
| | 02:08 | I am going to change that value to 7.
5 inches, because I am cheating and I
| | 02:12 | know that that works.
| | 02:13 | Now I need to include a Leader, I need
to create that line, so I have set up the
| | 02:18 | Tab Stop position, now I fill that
Leader field with an underscore, and when I
| | 02:23 | hit Enter, well, why don't I have a line?
| | 02:26 | I have the position, but I don't
have a tab character in my text yet.
| | 02:29 | So I am going to click after Name, hit
my Tab key and there is my line, because
| | 02:34 | I had all these paragraphs selected
when I established that Tab Stop and that
| | 02:37 | Leader character, all I have to do is go
into each paragraph, hit my Tab key and
| | 02:43 | there is my line, and that's way
easier than drawing them and it also ensures
| | 02:47 | that they line up exactly.
| | 02:50 | But I have some repair work to do
here, First Name and Last Name, I need
| | 02:54 | additional lines and down here in CityStateZip.
| | 02:56 | So I am going to click back in this
first paragraph and I want to make sure
| | 03:00 | that I create a new Tab Stop instead of
modifying the position in my existing tab stop.
| | 03:05 | This is pretty subtle, if you notice
where my cursor is, there is sort of a
| | 03:09 | little glow around that Tab Stop
character, the stops lives in this little
| | 03:12 | area up here, so I want to establish another
tab stop, little about the 41/2 or 41/4 inch mark.
| | 03:20 | So I am going to put 4.25, I am going
to add a Leader to that and things look
| | 03:26 | like they've fallen apart.
| | 03:27 | But now when I come back in
and I click my tab, there we go.
| | 03:31 | So I have two tab stops, see there is
one here at 41/4, it's sort of hidden
| | 03:36 | over here, because it's underneath
the indent marker, but I still have my
| | 03:39 | original one there, at 71/2.
| | 03:41 | Both of them have little
Leaders coming up to them.
| | 03:43 | I am going to take the same
approach down here in CityStateZip.
| | 03:46 | I'll just click in the paragraph and
one of the cool things about paragraph
| | 03:52 | attributes is that you don't have to
have the whole paragraph selected, you just
| | 03:54 | have to be clicked in the
paragraph and that's sufficient.
| | 03:58 | So I am going to add two new tabs stops,
I am just going to sort of approximate
| | 04:01 | them, there is one there, there is one
there and of course things don't look
| | 04:05 | quite right until I press my Tab key.
| | 04:08 | But I am going to place my little
Leader in there, to my little underscore for
| | 04:12 | that tab stop, little underscore for
that tab stop, again, it looks little
| | 04:16 | crazy now, but when I press my Tab key, there is
my line, there is my line, see how nice that is.
| | 04:24 | And one of the advantages of doing it
this way is that to change the length of
| | 04:27 | the line, all I have to do is
move the position of that tab stop.
| | 04:31 | So if I need a longer area for City name,
which is likely, State isn't going to
| | 04:36 | be very log, Zip is not going to be
very long, I can just move that little Tab
| | 04:40 | stop character and everything falls into place.
| | 04:43 | So there you go, and then you
can close your little Tab panel.
| | 04:47 | Now, what about the little
squares and the little circles?
| | 04:49 | Well, you can draw square, or draw
circles, but there are little characters like
| | 04:53 | that in Dingbat Fonts and that's
probably the easiest way to do this.
| | 04:57 | So I am going to click before Cooking
down here, and I am going to go hunting
| | 05:00 | for a character, and to do that I
am going to do use the Glyphs panel.
| | 05:04 | I go to Type and Glyphs, because this
text is Minion Pro, the Glyphs panel
| | 05:09 | thinks I want to search for a character in
Minion Pro, but I am going to go for Wingdings.
| | 05:15 | If you are on the Mac you
might have Zapf Dingbats.
| | 05:17 | There are number of other
Dingbats fonts that you can choose from.
| | 05:20 | And the cool thing about the Glyphs
panel is that you can see every character in
| | 05:24 | the font and at the lower right you
have these little mountain icons, the big
| | 05:29 | mountain makes them bigger, the little
mountain makes them father away, so that
| | 05:32 | you can see more, and there is my little square.
| | 05:35 | To inset a character from the Glyphs
panel, just click with your Type tool
| | 05:39 | to place an insertion point, find the
character you want, and then just double-click it.
| | 05:43 | Instead of doing that all over again, I am just
going to copy it and then I am going to paste.
| | 05:49 | There we go;
| | 05:50 | there are my little squares that are
going to become checkboxes in Acrobat.
| | 05:53 | Now I need little circles for the Yes and No.
| | 05:55 | So I am going to click Next to the Yes,
again, because that text is in Minion
| | 06:00 | Pro, it reverts back to Minion Pro, but
I am going to go back to Wingdings and
| | 06:06 | scroll until I see some nice little circles.
| | 06:09 | I have plain circles, they are pretty
nice, but I kind of like this one with a
| | 06:12 | little dimension to it.
| | 06:13 | So again, I have my text cursor in there,
just double-click and now I am through
| | 06:19 | the Glyphs panel, because for the
second instance of that little circle, I am
| | 06:23 | just going to Copy and Paste.
| | 06:25 | So now I have my lines, I have my
little squares, I have my little circles.
| | 06:29 | Now let's talk about the interactivity
that I said you could add in InDesign.
| | 06:33 | I would like this to really be a
clickable hyperlink, so I highlight the text,
| | 06:39 | and if I want to save myself some typing,
I can just copy it or and this is even
| | 06:43 | cooler, InDesign can actually
understand that this is a URL.
| | 06:47 | So I am going to go to Window>Interactive
>Hyperlinks, and if I say New Hyperlink
| | 06:52 | from URL, watch what it does.
| | 06:54 | It recognizes that as a URL format and
automatically that text is a hyperlink.
| | 07:00 | Although, it's not obvious, I think
it might be a good idea to at least
| | 07:02 | underline it, so I am going to go up
here to my Ctrl panel, and I am going to
| | 07:06 | click the little underline button and
anybody who sees underlined text, thinks
| | 07:10 | that that's a URL, and sure enough it is.
| | 07:13 | Now how about turning these guys into buttons?
| | 07:16 | This is just a textframe with a
green background and some text in it.
| | 07:20 | I want to turn it into an
interactive button, so I am going to go to
| | 07:22 | Window>Interactive and Buttons, and at
the lower right, there is little icon
| | 07:28 | that says, Convert to button.
| | 07:31 | The only difference you see is this
dash line around it and that just tells
| | 07:34 | you that it's a button.
| | 07:34 | It's just a way that InDesign
tells you the character of it.
| | 07:37 | You could change the name, I think that
might be a good idea, I will just name
| | 07:40 | it Reset, there is a lot of
interactivity you could add.
| | 07:43 | I mentioned earlier that Reset form
isn't one of them, but just so you know,
| | 07:47 | look at that nice long list of fun
things InDesign can make a button do.
| | 07:50 | We are going to select this Submit form,
make it a button and I will name it submit.
| | 07:57 | This is not really obvious that
these are buttons they just look like
| | 08:00 | little flat things.
| | 08:01 | So let's make them look a
little more button like.
| | 08:03 | I am going to go to Window and Effects.
| | 08:07 | At the bottom of Effects, you see the
little fx, here is a little dropdown menu,
| | 08:11 | I am going to choose Bevel and Emboss,
check Preview, and of course my gigantic
| | 08:16 | dialog box covers up the button.
| | 08:18 | Let's see, now it has a little depth to it.
| | 08:20 | I am going to set it to Chisel Hard,
and make it not quite so big, I think
| | 08:25 | that's probably big enough.
| | 08:27 | I didn't get fancy and put drop shadows
and so forth but, let's not get carried away.
| | 08:31 | Click OK, go back to this little guy and
give him a little Bevel and Emboss as well.
| | 08:36 | I am going to use the same
settings, any time you are creating
| | 08:42 | interactive products;
| | 08:43 | it's nice to give the user a
little bit of visual feedback I think.
| | 08:47 | These are buttons now and you will see
later on how buttons works in Acrobat,
| | 08:51 | but it's nice to give people some
visual feedback as they are dealing with a
| | 08:55 | button or other interactive features.
| | 08:57 | Just kind of keep them engage and lets
them know they are on the right trail.
| | 09:01 | So what I am going to do to both of
these is give them a different appearance
| | 09:04 | when you move your cursor
into the area of the button.
| | 09:06 | If you want you can kind of think of
the button area as sort of a hot spot.
| | 09:09 | So I have this Reset Form button
selected, notice in the Buttons panel, I have
| | 09:14 | Normal, Rollover and Click.
| | 09:16 | You can actually have three different
appearances to a button and you can really
| | 09:19 | get carried away with this.
| | 09:20 | I am going to choose the rollover
state and I am going to open up my Swatches
| | 09:24 | panel and I am going to change the
Color of this button just for that state.
| | 09:29 | It's kind of subtle.
| | 09:31 | So here is what it look like before
it's interacted with, here is what it will
| | 09:34 | look like when the user
moves their cursor on top of it.
| | 09:38 | It's subtle, but it's kind of a nice feedback.
| | 09:40 | I am going to do the same
thing with the Submit form;
| | 09:42 | I am going to activate the Rollover state,
I am going to go to my Swatches panel
| | 09:47 | and give it that full strength screen.
| | 09:50 | So the nice thing about that again,
is it confirms to the user that this is
| | 09:53 | actually an interactive object.
| | 09:56 | Now that I have everything in
place, it's time to make a PDF.
| | 10:00 | In InDesign it's just File>
Export and then choose Adobe PDF.
| | 10:05 | Now you have to choose
between Interactive and Print.
| | 10:09 | The obvious choice here
of course is Interactive.
| | 10:11 | So when I choose Interactive and I click
Save, if I need to replace it, that's fine.
| | 10:17 | Here are your options.
| | 10:18 | View After Exporting is kind of nice;
| | 10:20 | you can see your PDF and
make sure everything is okay.
| | 10:23 | This is pretty simplistic, it looks
like it doesn't give you a lot of options,
| | 10:26 | but the truth is, it
handles everything under the hood.
| | 10:29 | Anything you have here that's
interactive is going to be translated into
| | 10:32 | interactive features in Acrobat.
| | 10:34 | You might want to increase the
Resolution if you have images in here;
| | 10:38 | actually the artwork that's in place in
this document is a vector artwork, so it
| | 10:42 | doesn't really have any
resolution, so this has no bearing on it.
| | 10:45 | When I click OK, it makes a PDF and there we go.
| | 10:49 | Now notice this about my little buttons.
| | 10:51 | See, when I rollover them,
they change their appearance.
| | 10:54 | I can click on it, it has no action
attached to it, but we can see now that
| | 10:58 | it's a live button.
| | 10:59 | And when I hover my cursor over
the hyperlink, you can see that it's
| | 11:03 | recognized as a hyperlink.
| | 11:05 | You can make those buttons and make
those hyperlinks in Acrobat or you can do
| | 11:08 | them in InDesign, just kind of depends
on where you are more comfortable and
| | 11:11 | where you prefer to do it, it
comes out the same either way.
| | 11:15 | So that's how you can add lines,
checkboxes, potential checkboxes, radio
| | 11:19 | buttons etcetera in Adobe InDesign, and
then finish it off in Acrobat by making
| | 11:24 | these live text fields.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Looking at a finished PDF| 00:00 | Let's take a quick look at a finished
form and see how it's laid out, this might
| | 00:04 | give you some ideas about
building your own forms.
| | 00:07 | At the top of the form, there is some
information about why they'd want to fill
| | 00:10 | out the form, and you notice these
numbers at the left, sort of leads the user
| | 00:14 | to do the right thing, fill out their
Contact information, what they like to
| | 00:17 | donate so forth and so on.
| | 00:19 | It's very clear there is a lot of open
space, there is plenty of space for them
| | 00:22 | to put their names, etcetera.
| | 00:24 | At the bottom there is a separate area
for Method of Payment, little area for
| | 00:28 | Signature, so forth and so on.
| | 00:30 | This replicates a real world printed,
paper form, and so it's familiar to users
| | 00:34 | who have used it before, but for
somebody who is just coming at it fresh, it's
| | 00:38 | really obvious what the user ought to do.
| | 00:40 | And it's sort of ironic that when you
are designing interactive documents of any
| | 00:44 | kind, whether it's PDF form or even
HTML web pages, it's up to you to make it
| | 00:49 | ease for the guy on the
other side of the screen.
| | 00:51 | So you have to sort of anticipate how
someone you don't know is going to react
| | 00:55 | to the way you have laid this out.
| | 00:57 | One of the things that happens in an
Acrobat form that's kind of nice is its
| | 01:00 | fields are highlighted, notice they all
have this sort of light blue highlight.
| | 01:04 | Look at the upper right of the Acrobat
and you will see Highlight Existing Fields.
| | 01:08 | You can turn that off if it bothers
you, but anytime somebody opens up an
| | 01:12 | Acrobat form, whether they are opening
it in Acrobat Pro or in the free Adobe
| | 01:16 | Reader, fields are going to be
highlighted in blue, and that helps them discover
| | 01:20 | what they are supposed to do with the form.
| | 01:23 | So this is one of the many things
that Acrobat does to make life easier for
| | 01:26 | people who have to fill out forms.
| | 01:28 | So I just want you to take a quick
look at this, just notice how nicely it's
| | 01:31 | laid out, how it leads the user to do
the right thing, and keep these concepts
| | 01:35 | in mind when you start designing your own forms.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Enabling Reader users| 00:01 | I have this form opened in Adobe Reader.
| | 00:03 | I have the little purple bar up here
that tells me that this is a fillable form,
| | 00:06 | but I have some bad news over here on the left.
| | 00:08 | It says, Please Fill out the form, but
You cannot save data typed into this form.
| | 00:13 | Please print your completed form if
you want to copy for your records.
| | 00:16 | I thought we are all trying to go paperless.
| | 00:18 | So what's going on here?
| | 00:20 | There is a limitation to what
Reader can do, after all it's free.
| | 00:24 | By default it can't save a filled out form.
| | 00:27 | If you started filling out this form
and then saved it and closed it, opened it
| | 00:31 | again, everything you had put in there
would evaporate, and that's what this
| | 00:35 | means by saying, you can't
save data typed into this form.
| | 00:39 | This is pretty bad news.
| | 00:40 | But we're not stuck with this.
| | 00:42 | You as a user of Acrobat Pro can change this.
| | 00:46 | It's really very simple.
| | 00:47 | It's one of those things that
sort of hiding in plain sight.
| | 00:50 | Here's how you enable a form so
that a Reader user can save the data.
| | 00:55 | Go to File>Save As>Reader Extended
PDF and then choose Enable Additional
| | 01:01 | Features and the verbiage here tells
you what it's going to do, it's going to
| | 01:05 | allow them to save a filled out form, yay.
| | 01:07 | It's also gives them the opportunity to
use Commenting and drawing markup tools.
| | 01:11 | So if you need for someone to comment
on a project that's not yet finished, you
| | 01:16 | need for them to say, okay, or change
this, they don't have to have full-blown
| | 01:20 | Acrobat to do it, you have enabled
their ability to do that in the free Reader
| | 01:25 | and they can sign and use digital signatures.
| | 01:27 | When I choose Save Now,
something else is going to happen.
| | 01:30 | Notice this note here, it says Once
this is Reader Enable some functions, we
| | 01:34 | will be restricted, so make sure that
you're finished with your file and you can
| | 01:38 | end up saving copy of it anyway
and keep your original intact.
| | 01:41 | But once you save this as an enabled
file, you are not going to be able to edit
| | 01:46 | and you are not going to be able to
Insert or Delete pages, so that's to
| | 01:49 | protect the content.
| | 01:50 | When I say Save Now, I am just going to put
this on my Desktop and call it Reader Enabled.
| | 01:56 | I am going to Save and I am going
switch back to Reader and when I open that
| | 02:03 | file, I have the purple bar, but I don't
have the bad news, it says in fact, You
| | 02:11 | can save data typed into this form,
and one more thing, I remarked that you
| | 02:15 | would have commenting abilities
in Reader if that form was enabled.
| | 02:18 | I can put on sticky notes, and I can
highlight text, if I want to mark it up, if
| | 02:23 | I am in collaboration with
the creator of this file.
| | 02:26 | So it's a small thing, but when you go
to Distribute forms by Email, if you are
| | 02:30 | sending it out to one of two people,
don't forget to enable it, so that they can
| | 02:34 | save that filled out data and not
lose it when they close the file.
| | Collapse this transcript |
|
|
2. Creating and Editing Form FieldsUsing auto-recognition| 00:01 | Adobe Acrobat isn't a design program.
| | 00:03 | It can't do page layout like Adobe
InDesign, it can't draw like Illustrator, it
| | 00:08 | is not a Word processor like Microsoft
Word, and that's why you always create
| | 00:11 | your underlying form artwork in another
program, save or export it to PDF, then
| | 00:17 | bring it into Acrobat, and then
turn it into an interactive form.
| | 00:20 | Now there is a feature in
Acrobat called Forms Auto Recognition.
| | 00:24 | It will look at the content of this
artwork and try to figure out where there
| | 00:28 | ought to be form fields.
| | 00:30 | Now when you first hear
that, you think, oh great!
| | 00:32 | Now I am not going to have to
learn how to make form fields at all.
| | 00:35 | I have some good news and some bad news.
| | 00:37 | The good news is that the auto
recognition feature is pretty good;
| | 00:41 | the bad news is it isn't perfect, and
there are times when it fails to create a
| | 00:45 | field or it creates fields
where you don't want them.
| | 00:48 | Let's see what happens in this PDF
when I use the auto recognition feature.
| | 00:52 | To do that, I go to Tools>Create, and
it says do you want to use the current
| | 00:57 | document or browse to a file, or
would I even want to scan a paper form and
| | 01:01 | use the OCR features?
| | 01:02 | Well, I am going to use
the current PDF, of course.
| | 01:04 | So when I click Next, it says are you sure,
wouldn't you like to look for another file?
| | 01:08 | Nope, I want to use this one.
| | 01:11 | It happens so fast that this little
dialog is kind of handy, it says, by the
| | 01:15 | way, you are now in form editing mode.
| | 01:17 | When I click OK, you can
see that it has made fields.
| | 01:21 | You can see I am in a
slightly different environment.
| | 01:23 | If you want, you can think of forms
editing as sort of a separate module of Acrobat.
| | 01:28 | Notice up in my toolbar, my tools
have changed, now it shows me the forms
| | 01:32 | creation tools, and I have a bunch of fields.
| | 01:35 | But not everywhere, notice
here under Bullet Style Squares:
| | 01:38 | Wingdings, it saw those little
squares and then it ignored them. Why?
| | 01:43 | I wish I could answer that for you.
| | 01:44 | I really can't tell you how to predict
when this forms auto recognition won't work.
| | 01:50 | Basically, you just have to run it and
see what spots it misses and then you
| | 01:53 | have to sort of clean up after.
| | 01:55 | The reason I labeled these Manually-
created squares and Bullet Style Squares:
| | 01:59 | Wingdings, I was doing sort of a
science project to see what worked and what
| | 02:03 | didn't when I used the auto recognition feature.
| | 02:06 | These are styles used to
create the squares in InDesign;
| | 02:10 | they didn't seem to survive the trip.
| | 02:12 | These were little manually
inserted squares and they seemed to work.
| | 02:15 | Don't count on that being the case,
all I'm trying to tell you really here
| | 02:18 | is that sometimes it recognizes things you
think it ought to, and sometimes it doesn't.
| | 02:23 | So that's why I say you have to be sort
of emotionally prepared for this to not
| | 02:27 | be perfect and you really do have
to learn how to make form fields.
| | 02:31 | So, this will give you a headstart,
but it won't necessarily finish off
| | 02:34 | your forms for you.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Understanding fields| 00:00 | In this finished form, let's take a
look at some generalities about forms.
| | 00:05 | We have text fields, we have checkboxes,
we have radio buttons, some buttons,
| | 00:09 | and not quite so obvious, we
also have a hyperlink up here.
| | 00:13 | This is why that Select Object tool is so handy;
| | 00:16 | when you click that, you can see
everything interactive that's in place,
| | 00:19 | whether it's a hyperlink or it's a
form field, and you can also see the names
| | 00:24 | of your form fields.
| | 00:26 | This document was created with the auto
recognized feature and a little bit of handwork.
| | 00:30 | So you'll notice that it's named
this field Phone (optionals), it's named
| | 00:33 | this Email (optional).
| | 00:34 | That's okay, but what if you
want to change it? Pretty simple!
| | 00:37 | Just double-click the field, click
in the Name field, and modify it.
| | 00:42 | Notice this other little field that
says Tooltip, what does that mean?
| | 00:45 | Well, I will show you.
| | 00:47 | I am going to modify it
now and then click Close.
| | 00:49 | I am going to switch back to the Hand tool
and as I hover over that, that's the tooltip.
| | 00:54 | Each field, if it has a Tooltip
option chosen, is going to give this little
| | 00:58 | flag, when the user waits for just
a second and hovers over the field.
| | 01:03 | Usually, it just repeats the name of
the field, that's the default in Acrobat,
| | 01:06 | but maybe you want to use it to
give somebody additional information.
| | 01:09 | For instance, under Email, maybe I want
to make sure that it's their work Email.
| | 01:13 | So I can choose a Select
Object tool, double-click.
| | 01:17 | While I am in here, I'm going to
shorten the Name just for grins, and then here
| | 01:20 | I will say, Use work email.
| | 01:25 | And when I switch back to the
Hand tool, we look at the results.
| | 01:28 | So these are just niceties, and again,
it's about trying to make it easy for the
| | 01:31 | person filling out the form.
| | 01:33 | I've checkboxes and I've radio buttons,
and here's a difference between them.
| | 01:37 | Checkboxes, allow you to
check multiple checkboxes.
| | 01:42 | If you want to uncheck one, you just
re-click on it and that clears it out.
| | 01:46 | Radio buttons though exist as sort of
families, and they are mutually exclusive.
| | 01:50 | So in this little radio button family,
I can check Yes or I can check No.
| | 01:55 | I can't check both of them.
| | 01:57 | I have some buttons down here;
| | 01:58 | the Reset button will clear out the form.
| | 02:00 | So notice that now all my little
fields are clear, and then a Submit button
| | 02:05 | which brings us to another topic.
| | 02:07 | If you are just going to have
somebody email information back to you,
| | 02:09 | that's very easy to do;
| | 02:11 | if you want them to print this out and
fax it to you, that's the old-fashion
| | 02:14 | way, but that works too.
| | 02:15 | If you're creating a form that's going
to have to interact with some sort of
| | 02:18 | a server process that somebody else
has set up, an ASP or PHP or some other
| | 02:23 | acronym based process, that's something
you are going to have to work out with them.
| | 02:27 | It's beyond the scope of this course,
but it brings up a consideration.
| | 02:31 | Think of it like catch and throw.
| | 02:33 | You're throwing data at
some sort of server process;
| | 02:36 | it's going to catch it and do
what it's supposed to with it.
| | 02:39 | You need to work with the person or
persons creating that other end of things
| | 02:43 | to make sure that you've named your
form fields, something that's going to work
| | 02:46 | with their process, and that you're
exporting the sort of data that that
| | 02:49 | process understands.
| | 02:51 | It's not just you working alone;
| | 02:52 | you are going to have to coordinate your
efforts with somebody on the other end.
| | 02:56 | You'll find that you can assign
actions to some form fields, notably buttons.
| | 03:01 | For instance, that Reset button
under Actions, it says Reset a form.
| | 03:06 | So that's why I can clean out the form fields.
| | 03:09 | So any button can have an action applied to it.
| | 03:12 | You can even apply actions to text fields,
doesn't usually make sense, but it is possible.
| | 03:16 | We will take a quick look, notice
that you have all these little tabs when
| | 03:20 | you're looking at a text field.
| | 03:21 | When you look at a checkbox, you see
rather a different set of tabs, and when
| | 03:26 | you get to buttons, you
see a different set of tabs.
| | 03:29 | So each species of form field is going
to have its own kinds of options, and as
| | 03:33 | we dig deeper into the individual
field types, you'll see how those are
| | 03:37 | different, but this is just a general view.
| | 03:40 | Switch back to the Hand tool, now you
can fill out the field, and that's one
| | 03:43 | thing you are going to find if you are
in work mode, while you are modifying
| | 03:47 | fields, you can't test them.
| | 03:48 | You always have to switch back to your
little Hand tool and then you can fill this out.
| | 03:54 | You can hit your Tab key,
and go between your fields.
| | 03:57 | I am not going to bother
to type anything sensible.
| | 03:59 | You can check your little checkboxes,
check your little radio buttons, Submit,
| | 04:04 | if that's what you need to do, and in
this case, I am just going to Reset.
| | 04:07 | So this is just a quick overview,
mainly to show you that Tooltips can be kind
| | 04:11 | of handy, and to show you some of the
general types of form fields you are
| | 04:14 | going to be creating.
| | 04:15 | I will tell you that the ones you
create most often are going to be text
| | 04:18 | fields, and checkboxes, and radio
buttons, and the occasional button, but there
| | 04:22 | are many more kinds.
| | 04:24 | So, this was a quick overview and in
subsequent movies, we are going to look at
| | 04:27 | each type of form field individually,
so you can create and modify them.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Designing for neatness| 00:00 | Acrobat gives you some tools for making your
forms nice and neat, looking more professional.
| | 00:06 | Let's look at one of those tools.
| | 00:08 | We'll look at a grid;
| | 00:09 | View>Show/Hide>Rulers & Grids>Grid.
| | 00:14 | So there's the blue grid.
| | 00:15 | Now if I take my Select Object tool and
I start moving my fields around, I can
| | 00:19 | use the grid as a visual guide,
but my fields don't snap to it.
| | 00:24 | So by default, they don't respond to the grid.
| | 00:26 | By the way, if you want to change the
measurements of the grid, here's how you do that.
| | 00:30 | On Windows, you go to Edit and Preferences;
| | 00:32 | on the Mac you are going to find
Acrobat up here, and you'll go to Acrobat
| | 00:36 | Preferences, slight difference,
but you'll end up the same place.
| | 00:39 | Down at the very bottom of
the list, choose Units & Guides.
| | 00:43 | So if I have Width between lines,
both Height and Width, 1 inch, may be I
| | 00:47 | want 10 subdivisions.
| | 00:48 | So I'll make 10 subdivisions, click OK and
you might notice a subtle change in my grid.
| | 00:54 | Still, my fields have not been told
that they need to snap to the grid.
| | 00:58 | So that takes a second choice.
| | 00:59 | Go to View>Show/Hide>Rulers &
Grids, and choose Snap to Grid.
| | 01:05 | Now as I start to move them around,
you see that sort of jerky motion.
| | 01:09 | It's because now the fields
are going to snap to the grid.
| | 01:13 | So as I move them, I want their top
edges to align and that's very easy to do.
| | 01:18 | However, we will tell you that
it's rare that this grid lines up with
| | 01:21 | your underlying artwork.
| | 01:22 | Here I don't have any underlying
artwork, so I have sort of free reign.
| | 01:26 | So you might find that even though the
grid is nice for neatening things up, it
| | 01:30 | may actually fight you when you're
trying to match your artwork, but at least
| | 01:33 | now you know it's there.
| | 01:34 | If I go to View>Show/Hide>Rulers &
Grids, and turn off the grid, these
| | 01:41 | fields are still going to snap to that grid,
even though I don't see it, it's still active.
| | 01:44 | So you have to remember to go back
to View>Show/Hide>Rulers & Grids, and
| | 01:48 | turn off Snap to Grid or it will kind
of drive you nuts as you try to match
| | 01:52 | up to your artwork.
| | 01:54 | Let me show you what I think is an
easier way to make your forms nice and neat.
| | 01:58 | I want to select all three of these
form fields and I want their top edges to
| | 02:01 | all line up with the top edge of Text1.
| | 02:04 | To select them all, I
have two methods I can use.
| | 02:06 | I will click on Text1, hold
down Shift, and select Text2.
| | 02:11 | I am still holding down Shift and I
click on Text3. That's one method.
| | 02:15 | Here's another one.
| | 02:15 | Just click and drag and create a
selection marquee that touches all three;
| | 02:19 | it doesn't have to totally encompass them.
| | 02:22 | It just has to touch them and now
I have all three of them selected.
| | 02:26 | Notice that two of the fields have light
blue outlines and one has a dark blue outline.
| | 02:30 | That dark blue outline is significant;
| | 02:32 | it means that this is going to be the
key field when I perform an alignment.
| | 02:36 | It means that field is going to hold
still and the other selected fields
| | 02:39 | are going to match it.
| | 02:40 | I am going to right-click, choose
Align, Distribute or Center and choose
| | 02:45 | Align Top and notice that Text2 and Text3
move up, so their top edges align with Text1.
| | 02:50 | Pretty straightforward!
| | 02:51 | I am going to undo, so that
we can try something else.
| | 02:55 | What if I want Text1 and Text3 to
line up with the top edge of Text2?
| | 03:00 | To change the key field, the field
that's going to hold still and govern the
| | 03:04 | other fields, hold down
Shift and click on that field.
| | 03:08 | Notice now it has a dark blue background.
| | 03:10 | Right-click>Align, Distribute or Center>
Align Top, and see, Text1 and Text3 move
| | 03:16 | to match the top edge of Text2.
| | 03:17 | So just remember that Shift+click to
choose a field to be the key field in an
| | 03:22 | operation like that.
| | 03:24 | What if I want all these fields to
be the same width and height as Text2?
| | 03:28 | Very easy to do with a contextual menu;
| | 03:30 | right-click and choose Set Fields to Same Size.
| | 03:34 | Notice what the options are, adjust
the Height, adjust the Width, or Both.
| | 03:38 | I think I will go for Both.
| | 03:39 | So now Text1 and Text3
are the same size as Text2.
| | 03:44 | So you can see, you could actually put
your fields in pretty quickly and not
| | 03:47 | worry about being very neat, and
then use these operations to make things
| | 03:50 | neat after the fact.
| | 03:52 | Let's look at Distribution.
| | 03:54 | So I am going to move these fields
to kind of a sloppy random pattern.
| | 04:02 | First of all, I am going to make them
all the same size, because I just think
| | 04:05 | that would be nicer.
| | 04:06 | So I am going to select them all with
that marquee drag, Text1 is the one I want
| | 04:10 | them all to match, right-click>Set
fields to Same Size>Both. There we go!
| | 04:16 | Now, when I choose Align,
Distribute or Center, if I choose Distribute
| | 04:20 | Vertically, what's going to happen is
Text1 at the top, Text6 at the bottom are
| | 04:24 | going to hold still, and the other
fields are going to move, so that the
| | 04:28 | distance between them is the same.
| | 04:30 | It's a little hard to tell with them
all spread out like that, so I am going to
| | 04:33 | align their left edges, and
there you can see, nice and neat.
| | 04:36 | So keep this in mind;
| | 04:37 | you may find it easier to work a
little loosely when you start to create your
| | 04:40 | fields, and then use this contextual
menu to control the size, control the
| | 04:45 | position in the page, and neaten
up your form, so that it's nice and
| | 04:49 | professional when you're done.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Creating text fields| 00:00 | The most common type of form field
you're going to create is the text field.
| | 00:04 | All the fields that you see in this
PDF are text fields but some of them have
| | 00:07 | some special features.
| | 00:09 | The Name field is pretty simple.
| | 00:11 | Just type whatever you want
and it appears in the text field.
| | 00:14 | Same for the Address field but the
ZIP Code field is a little special.
| | 00:18 | If I try to type a letter in that field, it
won't accept it, it will only accept numbers.
| | 00:23 | So, when I type numbers, it will
also only accept five numbers and that's
| | 00:27 | because the format of that field says
hey, I'm a ZIP Code field and I take a
| | 00:31 | five-digit ZIP code.
| | 00:31 | Let's see what happens in the Phone field.
| | 00:35 | Again, I'm going to type digits.
| | 00:37 | It only accepts a maximum number of
digits that would constitute a phone number
| | 00:41 | and when I hit my Tab or Enter key to
commit to that value then it reformats
| | 00:45 | the way it looks, puts parentheses
around the area codes and then hyphenates
| | 00:49 | the remaining numbers.
| | 00:50 | What about the Date?
| | 00:54 | I've tried it with hyphens but
when I tab to commit to that value, the
| | 00:58 | formatting changes, so that it's
divided by slashes and again, it's a
| | 01:01 | behavior that's built into this field.
| | 01:05 | For the Credit Card Number, this is not
my credit card number and this is what's
| | 01:09 | called a calm field.
| | 01:10 | So notice how the numbers fall neatly
into those individual little squares.
| | 01:15 | You might notice too that they are formatted a
little bit differently from the other fields;
| | 01:19 | the other fields are using Helvetica,
this is using Courier and again it's just
| | 01:22 | part of the default
behavior of that kind of field.
| | 01:26 | This is what's called a multi-line text field.
| | 01:28 | So if you want somebody to type in a
comment or type a whole paragraph about
| | 01:34 | something, as you keep typing, if it's
going to overflow, the text gets smaller
| | 01:39 | and smaller and smaller.
| | 01:41 | There's a range of text size from 2
points to 300 points and this is set to
| | 01:46 | auto, so that you don't have
to pick a hardwired number.
| | 01:49 | This way it's going to
accommodate whatever somebody types in.
| | 01:53 | Now, to create all my text fields,
first, I go to Tools and choose Edit.
| | 01:58 | Now, Acrobat offers to auto detect.
| | 02:00 | That would be cheating, so I'll click No.
| | 02:02 | Now that I'm in form editing mode, you
can see all the form creation tools up here.
| | 02:06 | I'll choose my Text Field tool.
| | 02:09 | You might notice that vertical and
horizontal dotted line, that's trying to help
| | 02:12 | you align with your artwork.
| | 02:14 | It can be sort of handy.
| | 02:16 | I'm just going to name this name and to
dismiss this little yellow mini dialog,
| | 02:21 | I just click outside it.
| | 02:23 | What if I want to control something
about the formatting of that field?
| | 02:26 | I'm going to make another field;
| | 02:27 | this would be my Address field.
| | 02:29 | I'm going to start as I did before but
then I'm going to click All Properties.
| | 02:33 | That brings up my Text Field
Properties dialog and you'll notice all these
| | 02:37 | tabs across the top.
| | 02:38 | We'll do just a quick skate across them;
| | 02:40 | General, Name and Tooltip.
| | 02:43 | If you want the user to have something
that informs them as they hover over the
| | 02:46 | field, it's a good idea to put
something in the Tooltip field.
| | 02:49 | I'm going to put work address.
| | 02:51 | Form Field Visible, certainly.
| | 02:54 | Under Appearance, because I have
underlying artwork I don't want to cover-up,
| | 02:57 | I'm going to leave the Border
Color and Fill Color at None.
| | 03:01 | I might want to change the size of the text.
| | 03:03 | Maybe I'll set that to 14.
| | 03:06 | Under Options, I could change the
Alignment, Left, Center and Right.
| | 03:11 | I can also put in a Default Value.
| | 03:13 | The only thing about the Default
Value is it might happen that the user
| | 03:18 | overlooks that and thinks oh, I fill
that out and maybe it's not what they
| | 03:21 | want to put in there.
| | 03:22 | So, this isn't something you often
use but just kind of be aware of it.
| | 03:26 | There aren't going to be any actions
that happen when they type in this field
| | 03:29 | and nothing special about
the formatting for this field.
| | 03:32 | There'd be no validation but I
want to make you aware of this.
| | 03:35 | If it's a number, maybe that has to be
let's say between 2 and 100, you could
| | 03:40 | say that it has to be
validated to be in that range.
| | 03:44 | Why it's grayed out?
| | 03:45 | Now it's because this is not set to be a Number.
| | 03:48 | Now, if I go to validate, I could
say that it's in a certain range.
| | 03:51 | Well, this is an Address field,
so that's not appropriate.
| | 03:54 | So we go back and say nothing for that
special format and there aren't going to
| | 03:58 | be any calculations in here.
| | 04:00 | So, just a quick skate just to make
you aware in general what are under
| | 04:04 | all these little tabs. Click Close.
| | 04:07 | Now, we'll start making
some of the special fields.
| | 04:10 | Again, with my Text Field tool, I'm going
to click and drag and make my ZIP Code field.
| | 04:15 | Name it zip and hit All Properties.
| | 04:20 | I'm going to give the user a little bit
of help, I'm going to say 5-digit ZIP code.
| | 04:26 | That way they know not to enter the
ZIP +4.Again, for the Appearance, Border
| | 04:30 | Color, Fill Color, I'm going to leave
that at None, but what I'm going to do
| | 04:34 | that's going to control formatting in
this field is go to the Format tab, under
| | 04:38 | format category choose Special and
then I can see that ZIP Code option.
| | 04:44 | And when I choose that ZIP Code option,
what's going to happen is that that
| | 04:47 | field will no longer accept letters
and it'll only accept five digits.
| | 04:51 | So, if you try to put in six
digits, it won't allow that.
| | 04:55 | Click Close and there we go.
| | 04:57 | Now, for the Phone number field, very
similar to what we did with the ZIP Code field.
| | 05:02 | Again, I'm going to name it
phone and click All Properties.
| | 05:05 | Under Format, notice that it jumped
right to that Format tab, it's trying to
| | 05:08 | give you a little bit of a head start,
it says you did that with the last field,
| | 05:12 | maybe you want to do the same thing here.
| | 05:13 | That would save you a little time.
| | 05:15 | So again, I'm going to choose Special.
| | 05:16 | I'm going to choose Phone Number
and there aren't any other options;
| | 05:20 | it has its own little formatting that's
already set up and you can't change that
| | 05:25 | and that's what puts the area code in
parentheses and does the hyphenation. Now, for the Date;
| | 05:30 | let's click and drag.
| | 05:32 | Click my Date field, I don't think it needs to
fill that whole line, and this is a date format.
| | 05:41 | There's a multitude of
formats you can choose for the date.
| | 05:43 | What it controls is not how that data
is entered but how it's going to look
| | 05:48 | after you exit that field.
| | 05:50 | So I'm going to go for double-digit month,
double-digit day and then four-digit year.
| | 05:58 | There's a little example down here to
show you what it's going to look like.
| | 06:00 | It's a good idea to take a look at
that to make sure that you didn't
| | 06:03 | accidentally picked the
wrong format, one you don't want.
| | 06:06 | So, when I click Close, there we go.
| | 06:09 | Now for the Credit Card Number
and this is sort of an odd one.
| | 06:12 | You don't make a separate little
text fields for each one of those little
| | 06:15 | squares, you make one big text field
that covers the whole thing and then
| | 06:20 | before you go into the dialog, it behooves you
to count how many little squares you'll need.
| | 06:23 | I happen to know it needs 16.
| | 06:26 | So, I'm going to name it cc for
credit card and then click All Properties.
| | 06:30 | This isn't under the Format tab;
| | 06:32 | it's under the Options tab and it's
sort of an odd thing hiding in plain sight.
| | 06:37 | This is the option I want at the bottom,
comb of 16 characters, but it's grayed out.
| | 06:42 | It's sort of an odd thing but you
won't be allowed to create any combs if you
| | 06:46 | have any of these other
checkboxes checked. Don't know why?
| | 06:49 | That's just how it is.
| | 06:51 | Uncheck Scroll a long text, uncheck
spelling and look it comes to life.
| | 06:56 | Check that Comb option and hopefully,
you've already counted how many you need.
| | 07:00 | I cheated and counted ahead of time, I
know we need 16 and then click Close.
| | 07:05 | Now to finish, I'm going to create the
little text field that's going to hold
| | 07:09 | the user's comments.
| | 07:10 | Again, Text Field tool, I'm going to name it
comments, of course, and click All Properties.
| | 07:17 | Under Options, I'm going to choose
Multi-line and that allows the user to type
| | 07:22 | multiple lines of text.
| | 07:23 | It will scroll along text so forth and so on.
| | 07:25 | I'm going to do one more thing.
| | 07:27 | Under Appearance, I'm going to
change the Font Size to Auto.
| | 07:31 | In that way, if they type a ton of stuff,
the text is going to get smaller and
| | 07:36 | smaller and smaller, so
that it all fits in there.
| | 07:38 | I'm going to click Close, let's test the form.
| | 07:41 | So, to test the form, I have to exit
form editing, so I click Close Form Editing.
| | 07:46 | Now, I'm back out in the main part of Acrobat.
| | 07:48 | You can see that all my
fields have that blue highlighting.
| | 07:51 | By the way, if that bothers you while
you're working on forms, you can turn it off.
| | 07:55 | At the upper right, just click
Highlight Existing Fields and there you go.
| | 07:59 | It's a good way to test whether you've
made all your fields but sometimes you
| | 08:02 | just get tired of looking at it.
| | 08:04 | So, we'll do the Name. Everything's fine.
| | 08:07 | When I hit Tab, it goes to the next
field and then the Address then the ZIP Code.
| | 08:15 | It won't accept a letter, that's
good and it will only accept five
| | 08:18 | numbers, that's good.
| | 08:20 | Phone number, as I tabbed to exit
that field, it changes the formatting.
| | 08:25 | Let's see how the Date field does.
| | 08:27 | I'm just going to type 06-12-2012.
| | 08:31 | When I tab out, it puts in the slashes,
and then we'll do the fake Credit
| | 08:35 | Card Number and notice how it puts all
the numbers in those little areas, isn't
| | 08:40 | that cute, and then for the
Comments, there we go. So, there we go.
| | 08:49 | So those are the most common types
of fields you're going to be making;
| | 08:52 | text fields and it's a look at some of
the types of text fields you'll create
| | 08:56 | now and then like ZIP Codes, Phone
fields, Date fields and Credit Card Numbers
| | 09:00 | and then the Comments field
with the multi-line text field.
| | 09:03 | So, that's a quick look at creating and
changing the formatting of text fields.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Creating check boxes| 00:00 | This form uses both
radio buttons and checkboxes.
| | 00:04 | While we're going to concentrate on
checkboxes in this exercise, this is a nice
| | 00:07 | opportunity to compare the
way the two fields behave.
| | 00:11 | Radio buttons such as the one by Roast
Beef or Rosemary Chicken or Vegetarian
| | 00:16 | Platter, allow only one choice.
| | 00:18 | I can't choose all three entrees,
after all it would be a big greedy.
| | 00:22 | But at the bottom, we're using
checkboxes, so that they can choose their sides.
| | 00:27 | Maybe they want some Garlic Potatoes, the
Vegetable Medley and some Cranberry Sauce.
| | 00:31 | Well, what if they change their mind?
| | 00:33 | Well, they can click again and the
field clears itself out and maybe they'd
| | 00:37 | rather have Polenta.
| | 00:39 | So, that's the way checkboxes work.
| | 00:40 | You can choose as many as you like.
| | 00:43 | They're not mutually exclusive like
radio buttons, and to uncheck one, all you
| | 00:47 | have to do is reclick on it.
| | 00:49 | So, let's see how checkboxes work.
| | 00:51 | I'm going to go back to the start
version of this file, go to Tools, Forms
| | 00:56 | and choose Edit, and you'll often see this,
Acrobat offers to do the auto-recognition.
| | 01:01 | We don't want that, so I click No.
| | 01:03 | Checkbox is the second tool in the
row up here, and we're going to skip the
| | 01:08 | radio buttons, because we're not
going to work on them until later.
| | 01:11 | All I have to do is just click and
drag, create a little rectangular field;
| | 01:15 | the little yellow mini dialog box comes up.
| | 01:18 | And you can name this whatever you want,
I will say that I am a fan of short
| | 01:22 | field names, and as you create more
and more of them, you may find that you
| | 01:26 | tend to abbreviate. All right!
| | 01:27 | I might go so far as to just
type gp for garlic potatoes.
| | 01:31 | It's whatever works for you.
| | 01:32 | Do I want to change some of the properties?
| | 01:35 | Let's take a look at them.
| | 01:36 | When I click on All Properties, of course
my Check Box Properties dialog comes up.
| | 01:41 | I can choose a Border Color and Fill
Color, and by default, it puts a black
| | 01:44 | border and a white fill on it.
| | 01:46 | Well, I already have a square in place in my
artwork, so there's really no need for this.
| | 01:51 | I'm going to just change my Border Color to
No Color, and change my Fill Color to No Color.
| | 01:56 | For my Options, I can choose the Check
Box Style, in other words what's going to
| | 02:00 | appear in that checkbox,
when somebody clicks it.
| | 02:03 | I'm going to leave it at
the default, Check and Close.
| | 02:06 | Now, let's see what some
of the other options are.
| | 02:08 | I'm going to go back to my Checkbox
Tool and I'm going to make a new field
| | 02:12 | by Vegetable Medley.
| | 02:13 | I'm going to name it vm for vegetable medley.
| | 02:16 | Again, you name it whatever works for you,
and I think I'll change this to Circle.
| | 02:21 | We might want to stop here
and consider the export value.
| | 02:25 | If you have any build a form that's
going to have to talk to some sort of server
| | 02:28 | process, maybe there's a script that
needs to know what to do with the content
| | 02:32 | coming from this form, you should work
with the IT person or the scripter who
| | 02:36 | creates that script, because they may
ask you to name your field's certain
| | 02:39 | things, and they may ask you to set
your Export Values in certain ways.
| | 02:43 | Saying Yes here just means I checked
this checkbox next to this entry, but maybe
| | 02:48 | we'd like to say, vegetable medley.
| | 02:51 | It just depends on what's
happening on the other end.
| | 02:54 | When I click Close, here we go.
| | 02:56 | I'm going to make another one.
| | 02:58 | I don't think I'll take the time to
fill all of these out, I just want you to
| | 03:00 | see what some of the options are.
| | 03:02 | So, this one is going to be cran and
when I go to All Properties I think I'll
| | 03:07 | change this from Check to maybe Diamond.
| | 03:10 | I'm not going to worry about the Export Value.
| | 03:12 | All I'm really trying to show you
here is that you have options for how
| | 03:15 | that checked item is going to look and you
have some options for what your Export Value is.
| | 03:20 | Again, that depends on what happens
to this form after people fill it out.
| | 03:24 | When I click Close, and I Close
Form Editing; now I can test.
| | 03:29 | But notice what happened to
my other little two checkboxes.
| | 03:31 | I forgot to change the color to a
fill of none and a border of none.
| | 03:36 | Well, there are some things
that you can fix after the fact.
| | 03:39 | This is why I suggested that you put
your Select Object tool up in your Quick
| | 03:42 | Tools bar, because it comes
in so handy at times like this.
| | 03:45 | I'm going to get my Select Object tool,
I'm just going to throw a marquee over
| | 03:49 | both of those fields to select them
both, right-click and choose Properties.
| | 03:54 | Now you can't change everything about
them, because some things are unique to
| | 03:57 | each field, but one of the things I can
change, I can go to Appearance and I can
| | 04:02 | set both of them to have no
border color and no fill color.
| | 04:05 | When I Close, I can switch
right back to my Hand tool and test.
| | 04:09 | Again, we're seeing that blue highlight.
| | 04:11 | If you want to double-check, you can
turn that off and you can see now there's
| | 04:14 | nothing covering up the original artwork.
| | 04:16 | So, that's how you create checkboxes.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Creating radio buttons| 00:00 | In this form, the user has to make some choices.
| | 00:03 | Do they like traditional olive oils? Yes or No.
| | 00:06 | Yes, I think so. No, I don't know.
| | 00:09 | Notice that if I reclick a selected
radio button, that doesn't clear it out, and
| | 00:14 | that's part of the unique
nature of radio buttons.
| | 00:17 | Notice too that they're round.
| | 00:19 | As you've been making fields, you might
have noticed that you always click and
| | 00:22 | drag and create rectangle.
| | 00:23 | So how do these little guys get to
be round, I'll show you in a minute.
| | 00:27 | And then at the bottom would you
consider flavored olive oils. Yes, No, Maybe.
| | 00:33 | Notice a couple of things here.
| | 00:35 | The fields look a little bit different
even before you click on them and then
| | 00:38 | when you make a choice they appear differently.
| | 00:41 | So, there are some options on how
these radio buttons are going to appear.
| | 00:45 | Let's see how this happens.
| | 00:47 | I'm going to go to the
start version of the file.
| | 00:49 | Go to Tools and Edit and notice that
Acrobat didn't ask if I wanted to have an
| | 00:54 | auto-recognized tick place, that's
because it says, there's really just nothing
| | 00:57 | there that you want.
| | 00:58 | I'm going to choose my Radio Button
Tool and I'm going to click and drag to
| | 01:03 | create one next to Yes.
| | 01:06 | Notice that this little mini
dialog box looks a little bit different.
| | 01:09 | There's a Group Name and a Choice.
| | 01:11 | Radio buttons exist in little families,
little groups, so this group is going to
| | 01:15 | be about this question, do
you like traditional olive oils.
| | 01:18 | I'll just name the group trad.
| | 01:20 | What's the value of that Yes field?
| | 01:22 | By default it says Choice1;
| | 01:24 | I think I could just say Yes.
| | 01:26 | And there's a little warning at the
bottom that says, well, there's only 1
| | 01:28 | button in this group.
| | 01:29 | You need at least 2, and here it makes
it easy for you to make the next button.
| | 01:34 | So, when I click and drag to create
this one, it's still in the Group Name trad
| | 01:38 | and I'm going to have its Export Value be No.
| | 01:42 | If I wanted to keep going, I could just
click Add Another Button and keep going,
| | 01:45 | but I just need the two.
| | 01:47 | But notice that already you can see
that it looks like a circle. What is that?
| | 01:51 | When I click All Properties, it
automatically creates a Border Color and
| | 01:55 | Fill Color and there's no underlying artwork
for it to compete with, so that works just fine.
| | 02:00 | It's just the way radio buttons are
setup, they kind of do the work for you.
| | 02:05 | When I click Close, here we go.
| | 02:06 | So, now I'm going to make a
set of three radio buttons.
| | 02:09 | I go back and get my Radio
Button Tool, click and drag.
| | 02:13 | So, rather than trad, I'm going to
change it to other, and the Choice for this
| | 02:19 | one is going to be yes.
| | 02:21 | Again, it says, do you only have 1 button?
| | 02:23 | Yes, I'd like to make another button,
but first, I'm going to go to All
| | 02:27 | Properties, and I'm going to make
this one look a little bit different.
| | 02:30 | I'm going to choose Options and say you
know instead of the traditional Circle
| | 02:34 | since we're talking about non-traditional olive
oils, I think, maybe I'd like to have a Diamond.
| | 02:39 | So, when I Close, notice that you
don't even see the circle anymore.
| | 02:42 | So, already we see a
difference in the way this looks. Ah!
| | 02:46 | But I lost my little, to
make a new button. That's okay.
| | 02:49 | I could just make a new one on-the-fly,
but this is kind of an easy way to do this.
| | 02:53 | On the Mac you hold down Option, on Windows you
hold down Ctrl to duplicate an existing field.
| | 03:00 | Double-click, it's already named other.
| | 03:04 | All I have to really change is
under the Options, if I want it to look
| | 03:07 | differently in the center?
| | 03:08 | Hey, I'll put a Star in.
| | 03:10 | I wanted to change that Radio Button Choice,
that Export Value, so I'll change that to no.
| | 03:16 | And I'm going to do the same
thing to make my third button.
| | 03:18 | I'm going to Ctrl+Drag on Windows,
Option+Drag on the Mac, double-click to
| | 03:22 | wake it up and then under Options,
I'm going to change that to Cross, that
| | 03:27 | might be sort of cute and then the answer for
this one, the export choice is going to be maybe.
| | 03:33 | And again, consider what happens on the
other end when you filled out this form
| | 03:37 | if it's submitted to some sort of
web-based process, you have to know what's
| | 03:41 | going to happen in that script, you
have to know how you should name your
| | 03:43 | fields, and how you should set your choices.
| | 03:46 | But for now, this is really just
sufficient to show you how radio buttons behave
| | 03:49 | and how you create them.
| | 03:50 | So, when I Close and I switchback to
my regular mode by Closing Form Editing
| | 03:56 | we can see that all three of these are now
square, but they still are radio buttons.
| | 04:00 | So let's test them.
| | 04:02 | That's a Diamond, that's a
Star and that's the Cross.
| | 04:06 | Yes and No, and again, re-clicking them
doesn't clean them out, you either need
| | 04:10 | a Reset button or you might take note
over here, Clear Form, that's another way
| | 04:15 | to clean out your fields
when you're experimenting.
| | 04:18 | So that's radio buttons.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Creating list boxes| 00:00 | List boxes are used when you want to
give the user the opportunity to pick
| | 00:03 | multiple options within a field.
| | 00:06 | For instance here, we've been asked to
help name a new line of flavored oils.
| | 00:10 | If I click on the list, this little
scrollbar shows up and I can see what my options are.
| | 00:16 | Now let's see, do I like any of these?
| | 00:17 | HerbOlive, I sort of like that.
| | 00:19 | What if I want to pick another one?
| | 00:21 | Well, the caption up here tells me
that on the PC I can Ctrl+Click my
| | 00:25 | selections, on the Mac I can Command+Click.
| | 00:27 | So I am going to go down here and I
think I sort of like Modern Olive, so
| | 00:31 | I'll Ctrl+Click that.
| | 00:33 | There isn't a submit button on this form,
but if there were when I submit this
| | 00:36 | data it's going to
include both of those choices.
| | 00:39 | So how do you create a list box?
| | 00:41 | I am going to go to the start file,
go to Tools>Edit, the auto recognition
| | 00:47 | feature raise its head and says,
you want me to help? Nope.
| | 00:50 | So I am going to make my own list box.
| | 00:52 | So if I just click-and-drag to create
my rectangular field and I am going to
| | 00:58 | name it names, but then I am going to
go right to All Properties, so that I can
| | 01:03 | control the way it looks,
and the entries in that field.
| | 01:07 | Under Appearance, I don't want
to cover up what's underneath.
| | 01:09 | So I am going to change that to No Color.
| | 01:12 | The Options tab is where
all the work takes place.
| | 01:15 | This is where you enter the items
that are going to show up in the list.
| | 01:18 | So I am going to put in Herb
Olive and then click the Add button.
| | 01:23 | If I want to enter another option,
it's going to be let's say Modern Olive.
| | 01:28 | Now I might want to specify an Export Value.
| | 01:30 | So the easy way to do that of course is
to just copy and paste and then you have
| | 01:35 | to hit Add every time and that's
something you will forget as you start making
| | 01:39 | list boxes, but you will remember the next time.
| | 01:41 | And my last choice, because I don't
want you too carried away with this is
| | 01:45 | Beyond the Olive and again I am
going to copy and paste and click Add.
| | 01:51 | You must remember to click Add.
| | 01:53 | I also had to remember to check
Multiple selections so that they can choose
| | 01:57 | multiple selections here.
| | 01:58 | A couple things are going
that aren't exactly obvious.
| | 02:01 | Here is one of them.
| | 02:02 | Select an item in the list
and make it the default choice.
| | 02:05 | It's easy to forget that;
| | 02:06 | that last item that you've added
is selected when you hit Close.
| | 02:10 | That means that's what's
going to show up by default.
| | 02:12 | Something else you might want to
do is make this list alphabetical.
| | 02:16 | If I check Sort items here, notice
that now that list is alphabetical.
| | 02:20 | It's sort of an odd size feel.
| | 02:22 | I need for my text to be big enough
that you don't see two options at once.
| | 02:26 | I think, I am going to go back and
go to my Appearance and I am going to
| | 02:30 | increase my text Size, 14 is almost it.
| | 02:34 | 18, I think 18 might work.
| | 02:37 | One of the things I suggest you do in Options;
| | 02:41 | since whatever is chosen is like the
default selection, you don't want people to
| | 02:46 | accidentally choose
something they didn't mean to.
| | 02:47 | So I suggest that you put sort of the non-entry
in there that actually acts as a label.
| | 02:52 | So I am going to just type
Choose one... and add that.
| | 02:57 | It's not an olive oil flavor; it's a label.
| | 03:00 | I want to move it up to the top, so
it's the first thing in the list, but as
| | 03:03 | long as Sort items is checked, I can't do that.
| | 03:06 | So I uncheck Sort items, choose,
Choose one, and then hit Up.
| | 03:11 | Now it's at the top of the list and
because it's selected as I exit this dialog,
| | 03:15 | it's what's going to show
up by default in the field.
| | 03:18 | So when I click close, let's test, go to
Close Form Editing, switch to the Hand Tool.
| | 03:24 | When you click on the field, it
sort of comes to life, and this little
| | 03:26 | scrollbar shows up, and now as I go
through, if I want to choose Herb Olive,
| | 03:32 | and then maybe also choose Modern Olive,
remember I hold down Ctrl or Command and there we go.
| | 03:37 | So that's how list boxes work.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Creating dropdown boxes| 00:00 | Drop-down lists are used when you want to give
the user only one choice out of a list of options.
| | 00:06 | For example, a state.
| | 00:07 | You want them to choose their state,
they can't choose multiple states.
| | 00:11 | By the way, since you may frequently create
a state's drop-down list, a little advice.
| | 00:16 | Once you've created one,
remember where you saved it.
| | 00:18 | You might even save a special little PDF
that just stores that state's drop-down.
| | 00:23 | So you can copy and paste it
and put it into future forms.
| | 00:26 | So let's see how that list is constructed.
| | 00:28 | Go to Edit and I choose my drop-down list tool.
| | 00:33 | We are going to name it STATES
and then open up my Properties.
| | 00:39 | Under Appearance I think I might get
rid of my Fill Color just so I don't cover
| | 00:43 | up anything in the artwork,
and here's where all the work is.
| | 00:46 | I have to enter my items.
| | 00:47 | I am not going to do all 50 states.
| | 00:49 | You will be glad to know.
| | 00:50 | So this Sort items option will alphabetize.
| | 00:55 | Now one of the problems here is that
one of the states is now going to be the
| | 00:58 | default choice, even if I choose Alaska.
| | 01:02 | What if they don't live in Alaska?
| | 01:03 | We want to make sure that they don't
accidentally leave that choice in there
| | 01:06 | when it's incorrect.
| | 01:07 | So I recommend that you
create sort of a placeholder.
| | 01:11 | I'm just going to do ... and Add,
couple of nice things about that.
| | 01:16 | That's always going to go at the
top of your list alphabetically.
| | 01:19 | So even though you still have your
items sorted, that's going to be the first
| | 01:22 | item, and if it's the last thing you
create, remember that whatever is selected
| | 01:26 | when you exit this dialog,
that's going to be the default choice.
| | 01:29 | So when I click Close and I close my
Form Editing, that's what this looks like.
| | 01:35 | So they should be alerted by seeing
those three little dots that, oh, they need
| | 01:38 | to make a choice in that list.
| | 01:40 | So that's how you create drop-down list.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Introducing buttons| 00:00 | You might say that buttons are the most
powerful kind of form fields in Acrobat.
| | 00:05 | Buttons can make things happen.
| | 00:07 | For instance, in this form if I want to
submit the data, this document is set up
| | 00:11 | to submit the data by email.
| | 00:13 | So when I pressed Submit Form, it
gives me the option of selecting my Desktop
| | 00:18 | Email Application or Internet Mail.
| | 00:20 | I am not going to get all the way
through with this, but you can see that that
| | 00:23 | button sets things in motion.
| | 00:25 | By the same token this Reset Form
button has the job of cleaning out all form
| | 00:29 | fields that already have data in them.
| | 00:31 | When I press Reset Form, notice
that all the data is cleaned out.
| | 00:34 | I want to you notice something else.
| | 00:36 | As I roll my mouse over into the
area of one of these buttons, the
| | 00:40 | appearance changes slightly.
| | 00:41 | So this is a form of visual feedback and
this is a nice thing to do for the end user.
| | 00:47 | When they move over that, even if
they're not thinking about what it says they
| | 00:50 | are, they immediately think, oh,
this is something important.
| | 00:52 | This is something that's going to do something.
| | 00:55 | So it's a little hint to them, a little
visual feedback that kind of keeps them on track.
| | 00:59 | That's very powerful.
| | 01:01 | It's very interesting, but let me
show you something really cute that
| | 01:04 | form fields can do.
| | 01:05 | One of the cool things about form
fields is that they can contain graphics.
| | 01:10 | So watch what happens when
I rollover this thumbnail.
| | 01:12 | Well, for instance, look down at the
bottom, it says, Roll your mouse over a
| | 01:15 | thumbnail to see a larger image.
| | 01:17 | By the way, this is another form of feedback.
| | 01:20 | You want to educate the user so that they
don't miss out on some fun that's in this form.
| | 01:24 | So when I roll my mouse over the
thumbnail, a larger picture appears, and that
| | 01:28 | works for all of these thumbnails.
| | 01:30 | So think how this might be useful in an
educational form, you're trying to teach
| | 01:34 | somebody how to use something, you
could create buttons that let them see a
| | 01:38 | larger more detailed version of what
you're trying to tell them about and have
| | 01:42 | it all occupy a single space here.
| | 01:44 | Instead of having a much larger page, you can
have multiple pictures on top of each other.
| | 01:47 | I am going to show you how to do this
later, but just to give you an idea of
| | 01:51 | what's going on, this is something
called Show/Hide field, and for Show/Hide
| | 01:55 | fields to work you need two buttons,
one that contains the large image
| | 01:59 | that's going to show and hide,
show and hide, and another button that
| | 02:03 | contains the trigger.
| | 02:05 | So two buttons, one that contain the
image that you want to show and then hide,
| | 02:08 | and one button to act as the
trigger to show and hide it.
| | 02:11 | So that might give you an idea for
some things that you want to do an
| | 02:14 | interactive documents that might
be easier to do with buttons, than
| | 02:18 | other methods.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Controlling button appearance| 00:00 | While Acrobat is not a design program,
it does provide methods for controlling
| | 00:04 | the appearance of buttons.
| | 00:06 | You can add Label Button;
| | 00:08 | you can add what's called an Icon and
that means that you import artwork from
| | 00:11 | another program, such as
Illustrator or Photoshop.
| | 00:14 | You can combine labels and icons and
then the label is sort of like a caption,
| | 00:19 | and then you can bring in multiple bits
of artwork and populate the three button
| | 00:24 | states, Up, Over and Down.
| | 00:27 | So, this button actually has three
little pieces of artwork applied to it that
| | 00:32 | control three different
appearances, which is pretty interesting.
| | 00:35 | You don't have to get that fancy;
| | 00:36 | you can do something pretty simple
and still have it look like a button.
| | 00:40 | So, if I double-click this button and I
go to the Appearance panel, if I apply
| | 00:45 | different border color, to me that still
doesn't say hey, I'm a button, but this might.
| | 00:50 | If I choose Beveled for the Line Style,
now it looks like a button, it's a
| | 00:54 | little cheesy, but it does the job.
| | 00:56 | You have some other options.
| | 00:58 | You have Dashed, you have Inset,
sort of looks like it's pressed into the
| | 01:03 | page, and then Underline.
| | 01:06 | To me the most successful of
these is Beveled and here's a tip.
| | 01:09 | You actually don't have to have
your Border Color be different.
| | 01:12 | If you have your Border Color and your
Fill Color the same, that Beveled effect
| | 01:15 | still shows the edge of that.
| | 01:18 | I probably need label on this, so I'm
going to switch to Options, and then I'm
| | 01:22 | going to just type RESET
and make this a RESET button.
| | 01:28 | So that's pretty simple, but let's see
how this really fancy button was created.
| | 01:32 | So, I'm just going to move the original out
of the way and you can see how it's created.
| | 01:37 | When I go to Edit and I choose my
Button Tool, I'm just going to click and drag
| | 01:43 | and I'll just name it test, the
time-honored name and go to All Properties.
| | 01:48 | I'm going to start with my Appearance
tab and I'm going to get rid of the Fill
| | 01:52 | Color and the Border Color.
| | 01:54 | I don't need that, because
I'm going to import artwork.
| | 01:56 | When I go to Options, under Layout,
what Layout means is what are you going to
| | 02:00 | put in this button field.
| | 02:02 | Is it just going to be a label or is
it going to be imported artwork, an icon
| | 02:06 | or, and you saw earlier the Icon top,
label bottom so forth and so on.
| | 02:10 | Well, I want to import an icon with no label.
| | 02:14 | The Behavior is not what the button does;
| | 02:17 | it's how it behaves when somebody clicks on it.
| | 02:20 | So, if I choose Push, then I get
three states, Up, Down and Rollover.
| | 02:26 | If I just choose Outline, all it does
is just show an outline of the shape.
| | 02:30 | Invert, it looks like the
button is pressed into the page.
| | 02:33 | All of these are kind of cute, but I
think the one with the most potential is
| | 02:37 | Push, because I want
those three different states.
| | 02:40 | So, for my Up state, I go shopping for
the icon, and I'm going to browse and in
| | 02:48 | that folder there's a PDF
called Illustrator button artwork.
| | 02:52 | Notice that it says 1out of 6 images.
| | 02:55 | This is actually a six page, little bitty PDF.
| | 02:58 | There's page 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 and 6.
| | 03:03 | So, here's an idea.
| | 03:04 | Once you start creating buttons in
other programs, if that's what you want
| | 03:07 | to do, you might find that it's a nice idea
to create sort of a repository of buttons.
| | 03:12 | I use these little guys all the time,
so I have this little PDF with multiple
| | 03:16 | versions of that button that I
use for navigational buttons.
| | 03:19 | And I don't have to go hunting around for icons;
| | 03:22 | I know I have that one little file
that has everything I need in it.
| | 03:24 | This will be my start, I'll click OK.
| | 03:28 | For my Down state I'm going to go for
the blue and then for my Rollover state
| | 03:35 | I'm going to go for the green.
| | 03:41 | And you can double check, choose the
Up, Down, Rollover and there you go.
| | 03:46 | So, when I close and I Close Form
Editing, choose my Hand Tool, it's always
| | 03:51 | a good idea to test.
| | 03:52 | As I rollover and rolloff, it changes
color, and again, that's a hint to the
| | 03:57 | user that, oh, this must do something.
| | 03:59 | And then when I click, again, it's
just a little bit of visual feedback.
| | 04:02 | It passes in a hurry, but it's just a
confirmation to the user that yes, this is
| | 04:06 | supposed to do something;
| | 04:07 | I should be expecting something to
happen after I click this button.
| | 04:11 | So, you can see you can take the very
simple approach or if you want to prepare
| | 04:14 | artwork before you start your form,
you can do some very nice professional
| | 04:18 | looking buttons with very little effort.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Creating artwork in Photoshop| 00:00 | Photoshop gives you some great
tools for making good looking buttons.
| | 00:04 | I'm going to start by
creating a vector shape layer.
| | 00:07 | I'm going to use the Rounded
Rectangle Tool and do a little double-check up
| | 00:10 | here in the Options Bar to make sure
it's making a shape layer, and then I've
| | 00:15 | chosen a 100 pixels for the Radius, I
arrived at that by experimentation, you
| | 00:19 | almost always do want to go up that, it's
too small or too big and change the value here.
| | 00:25 | As I'm creating this I want to make sort of a
wide but shallow button, but it's not centered.
| | 00:30 | So here is a little
trick if you don't know this.
| | 00:32 | If you hold down the mouse button, don't
release it, press the Spacebar then you
| | 00:36 | can reposition, then when you let go of
the Spacebar you can continue drawing,
| | 00:41 | just kind of a little nicer.
| | 00:43 | Because, red was my foreground color,
if you notice over here in the Layers
| | 00:47 | Panel, it's sort of like a sheet of
color with a Vector Mask, but I want to make
| | 00:50 | it look more interesting.
| | 00:51 | So I'm going to use Styles.
| | 00:53 | If your Styles Panel isn't visible, go up
to Window and choose Styles to bring it up.
| | 00:59 | We have some styles in the Styles Panel
by default that are kind of interesting
| | 01:03 | but maybe they're not appropriate for buttons.
| | 01:04 | That one is kind of cute, but there is
a nice resource sort of hidden from you.
| | 01:09 | Go to the Styles Panel menu, Glass Buttons.
| | 01:12 | Do I want to replace my current styles?
| | 01:14 | No, I'd like to keep them,
so I'm just going to append.
| | 01:17 | Look at all those lovely glass buttons.
| | 01:21 | So what you can do is pick one of these as a
starting point and then modify the settings.
| | 01:25 | I'm going to pull the Layers Panel here
lose so that we can take a look at it.
| | 01:29 | Notice that everything that
constitutes this neat dimensional shape is
| | 01:32 | listed under Effects.
| | 01:34 | If I want to turn off one of them, I can
just turn off the little eyeball control.
| | 01:38 | But what I want to do here is I want
to modify the Bevel and Emboss settings.
| | 01:41 | So, I just double-click Bevel and Emboss,
that brings up the dialog and I think
| | 01:46 | maybe I'm going to harden it a little
bit and reduce the size of it so that it
| | 01:50 | looks more like a flat button with an edge.
| | 01:53 | So notice that you have complete control
over how this effect is applied to this
| | 01:58 | object, you can change the Gloss
Contour, the Shadow Mode, everything.
| | 02:01 | This is a very rich dialog box, but I
think they are just reducing the Soften
| | 02:06 | setting and maybe
increasing the size a little bit.
| | 02:09 | There, I think that's the button that I want.
| | 02:11 | So, now if I want to use this as a button
in Acrobat, I just have to save it as a PDF.
| | 02:16 | So I choose File>Save As, and then
I'll just put this on my Desktop, and I'll
| | 02:21 | just call it GoldButton, and then
I will save it as a Photoshop PDF.
| | 02:28 | There we go, Photoshop PDF, and that's it.
| | 02:33 | When I save this as a Photoshop PDF,
now when I go into Acrobat, I just go
| | 02:38 | through the dialog box and accept
the defaults, they are just fine.
| | 02:43 | You just keep clicking Yes until it shuts up.
| | 02:45 | Now, when I go into Acrobat and I want
to apply this as an icon, I can go and
| | 02:49 | find that PDF and apply it to my button.
| | 02:51 | So if you're familiar with Photoshop,
you have a really rich set of resources
| | 02:55 | for creating really
professional looking buttons.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Creating artwork in Illustrator| 00:00 | The Illustrator symbols are a great
resource for creating nice looking buttons.
| | 00:04 | Here in the Symbols panel, I'm going
to go to the lower left to the Symbol
| | 00:08 | Libraries Menu and choose Web
Buttons and Bars There're a number of nice
| | 00:12 | navigational buttons, we have some nice
sort of generic capsule shaped buttons.
| | 00:17 | I'm going to drag one of those in.
| | 00:18 | I know this looks enormous, but that's
because this is actually a very small
| | 00:22 | artboard, it's 2 inches by 1 inch.
| | 00:24 | There's really no reason to make a
great big artboard, because your buttons
| | 00:27 | aren't going to be huge in your
resulting Acrobat file, I don't think.
| | 00:31 | I can modify this even though it's a symbol.
| | 00:33 | I can change the height of it and so forth.
| | 00:36 | I can change the color of it.
| | 00:37 | Notice of course, when I drag that
symbol into the artboard, it's also added to
| | 00:42 | my main Symbols' panel.
| | 00:43 | There're a number of other symbols that
you might want to explore, great little
| | 00:46 | navigation buttons, so forth and so on.
| | 00:49 | Just remember this, it's just a great
resource, it keeps you from having to draw
| | 00:52 | buttons from scratch, because you can
always use them as a starting point and
| | 00:55 | then modify them as you wish.
| | 00:57 | So, I'm going to close that little
library out, and just concentrate on this.
| | 01:00 | If I want to change the color of this,
I can select it, go up to Edit>Edit
| | 01:06 | Colors, and choose Recolor Artwork.
| | 01:08 | There're other ways too, but I
think this is the easiest way.
| | 01:11 | Recolor Artwork opens up in the Assign
mode, but I think the Edit mode is more fun.
| | 01:16 | In the Edit mode, if you link the
harmony colors by clicking this little
| | 01:20 | chain-link icon, then the color
relationships stay intact and then you can
| | 01:24 | move that little control around your spectrum
until you find a nice color set that you like.
| | 01:30 | So, I'm going to make this sort
of a violent button and click OK.
| | 01:36 | Notice too over here in my Symbols panel,
the symbol has been changed as well.
| | 01:39 | So, there's this parent-child
relationship between the symbol and its
| | 01:43 | instance in the page.
| | 01:44 | What if I want to have different colors?
| | 01:47 | Well, then I could create separate
button artwork and then combine it into a
| | 01:50 | multipage PDF, and that's my plan here.
| | 01:53 | I'm going to choose my Artboard tool,
I'm going to hold down Alt on Windows, I
| | 01:57 | could also hold down Option on the Mac,
and I'm just going to drag to duplicate
| | 02:03 | that artboard, and then I'm
going to create another one.
| | 02:06 | Their position frankly doesn't matter, but
notice that they are now Artboard 1, 2 and 3.
| | 02:12 | I might want to give them better names.
| | 02:14 | I'm going to go to my Artboard panel,
and I can keep them in the same order, but
| | 02:19 | as I choose Artboard 1, I'm going to
call it Up, because ultimately that's going
| | 02:25 | to be the upstate for my button.
| | 02:26 | I'm going to choose Artboard 2,
change the name of that to Down, and then
| | 02:33 | Artboard 3 is going to be Rollover.
| | 02:36 | I know it sounds like dog
tricks, but it's button states.
| | 02:39 | But because it's a symbol, I can't
really change one of them without changing
| | 02:42 | the rest of them, unless I
break the link to the symbol.
| | 02:45 | So, that's what I 'm going to do.
| | 02:46 | On my Artboard 2, I'm going to go to my
Symbols panel and I'm going to click the
| | 02:51 | Break Link to Symbol.
| | 02:52 | I want to make sure that I
don't change the position of this.
| | 02:55 | Again, I'm going to Break Link to Symbol.
| | 02:57 | So, my Upstate is going to
be this festive Lavender.
| | 03:01 | On my Downstate I'm going to go again to
Edit and Edit Colors and Recolor Artwork.
| | 03:07 | Back again to Edit, I'm going to lock
my little chain-link there, and I'll make
| | 03:11 | this a different color, and remember
you can also choose your little brightness
| | 03:17 | slider and make it look
even more festive. Okay.
| | 03:22 | And then for my third one,
I'm going to do the same thing.
| | 03:24 | Edit>Edit Colors, Recolor Artwork.
| | 03:27 | Jump right to Edit, lock those little guys
together and I think I'll make this one blue.
| | 03:35 | Maybe this is little garish, but this
isn't to show you what colors you ought to
| | 03:38 | make your buttons, it's to show you
that you have really easy ways to create
| | 03:42 | interesting looking buttons.
| | 03:44 | So, I have my three artboards 1,
2, 3 for Up, Down and Rollover.
| | 03:48 | Now to save this as a multipage PDF
that I can invoke, when I want to add that
| | 03:53 | icon to my button in Acrobat, in the
Illustrator it's not a print or export
| | 03:57 | function to make a PDF,
it's just a save function.
| | 04:00 | So, I'm just going to put this on
my Desktop and I'm going to call this
| | 04:04 | ColorfulButtons, because they
certainly are, and instead of Illustrator, I'm
| | 04:09 | going to save it as an Adobe PDF.
| | 04:12 | The Save Adobe PDF dialog comes up.
| | 04:15 | Illustrator Default is fine, because
Acrobat understands that one of the
| | 04:19 | advantages of the Illustrator Default
format is that the Illustrator file itself
| | 04:23 | is encapsulated inside the PDF, it's
sort of two files for the price of one and
| | 04:28 | that means that you can easily
round trip it and have everything back.
| | 04:31 | So, when you round-trip this
PDF, it opens up in Illustrator.
| | 04:35 | There's your Illustrator file just
as you see it here with your multiple
| | 04:38 | artboards and everything.
| | 04:39 | When I choose Save PDF,
there we go, there's my PDF.
| | 04:43 | Notice, it says 1/3.
| | 04:44 | There's artboard 1, 2 and 3 and then
when I bring this into Acrobat and I want
| | 04:49 | to make it into the button states, I
can just choose page 1 for my first state,
| | 04:54 | my Upstate, page 2 for my Downstate,
and page 3 for my Rollover state, very
| | 04:59 | easy to do!
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Creating artwork in InDesign| 00:00 | InDesign has a nice sample
library of button artwork.
| | 00:04 | If I go to Window>Interactive and
Buttons, then go to the Buttons Panel menu, I
| | 00:09 | can choose the Sample Buttons.
| | 00:11 | This is just a library.
| | 00:12 | If you have used libraries in
InDesign before, you know how they work.
| | 00:15 | There is a nice assortment, little
rounded rectangles, round buttons, some
| | 00:20 | capsule shaped ones and some
nice little navigational arrows.
| | 00:23 | I am sort of partial to
these capsule-shaped buttons.
| | 00:26 | So I am going to drag this in.
| | 00:28 | I know it looks enormous, it's just
because this is a little bitty page.
| | 00:31 | There is sort of no sense in making an 81/2
page with a little bitty button in the middle.
| | 00:36 | So I am going to change some things about this.
| | 00:38 | I don't want that black border, so
I am going to change that to None.
| | 00:43 | And then I think I will keep the
green, I think that's just fine.
| | 00:46 | Notice that little icon at the lower
right, that just means that it's a button.
| | 00:50 | It doesn't matter whether or not it
is a button, because I'm just going to
| | 00:53 | use this as artwork.
| | 00:54 | But, if you want to convert it to a
plain old object, it's easier to do.
| | 00:58 | Just go to Window>Interactive,
bring up the Buttons Panel again.
| | 01:01 | And at the lower right this little icon,
we will convert it back to a normal object.
| | 01:06 | We get a little warning,
that's okay, we don't care.
| | 01:10 | If I want to have three different
button appearances for my up, down and
| | 01:14 | rollover states, I am
going to duplicate this page.
| | 01:17 | So when I go into my Pages Panel, I
could go to the Panel Menu and choose
| | 01:21 | Duplicate Spread or my favorite way, on
a PC just hold down Alt, on the Mac just
| | 01:26 | hold down Option, Drag, when you see the
Plus in the little Hand icon, let go
| | 01:31 | of your mouse, and there is your duplicate page.
| | 01:34 | I am going to Alt+Drag or Option+
Drag again and make a third page.
| | 01:37 | I am going to have my Up state be green;
| | 01:40 | on my Down state, I think I'll have it be blue.
| | 01:43 | So I select the object, I can go into my
Swatches Panel and just assign a blue swatch.
| | 01:48 | It still keeps that nice highlight
and it's sort of a shadow effect.
| | 01:51 | I am going to go to my third page, select
the button and maybe I will make this one red.
| | 01:56 | Of course, you can create your own
colors and apply them, but this is just a
| | 02:00 | quick way to show you.
| | 02:01 | When I zoom out, you can see my
three pages and those are going to be my
| | 02:07 | three button states.
| | 02:08 | The way to make this happen, I export
to a three page PDF and then I can invoke
| | 02:13 | that PDF in Acrobat as my source for artwork.
| | 02:16 | So it's just File and Export, I will
just put this on my Desktop, because that's
| | 02:22 | always an easy place to find
things and this will be my IDbuttonArt.
| | 02:28 | In truth it doesn't matter whether you
export this as an Interactive or a Print
| | 02:31 | PDF, because you don't care about any
other activity, you just care about the
| | 02:34 | artwork, so I'm to choose
Print. Let me click Save.
| | 02:39 | High Quality Print I think
is a good choice for this.
| | 02:41 | We don't care about any of this other
fancy stuff like optimizing and creating a
| | 02:45 | Tagged PDF, that's really all I need.
| | 02:48 | When I Export, it immediately
opens up in Acrobat and there we go.
| | 02:52 | There is my 1, 2 and 3.
| | 02:55 | So now when I make my button and I
invoke this PDF, I can choose among those
| | 02:59 | three pages to do my three states.
| | 03:01 | That's really pretty easy;
| | 03:03 | InDesign sort of does the heavy lifting for you.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Activating buttons| 00:00 | Let's take a look at some of the most
commonly used button actions, Execute a menu item.
| | 00:06 | In this case, the menu item is File>Print.
| | 00:10 | Go to a page view, in this case it
takes you to the second page of this
| | 00:13 | document, and there's another button
here that takes us back to page one.
| | 00:18 | Open a file, in this case it opens
another PDF, but it can be used to open any
| | 00:23 | file type, except an executable.
| | 00:26 | It can't launch an application.
| | 00:27 | You can't hook that button up to
let's say the Illustrator application or
| | 00:32 | Microsoft Word application, you hook
it to a document like a Word file or
| | 00:36 | an Illustrator file, and then the system
of course opens the appropriate application.
| | 00:41 | Open a web link.
| | 00:42 | There is a little screen that
shows up that tries to intercept you.
| | 00:45 | It's to keep bad things from happening.
| | 00:47 | Let's say we are trying to connect to lynda.
com, which is of course, a really good idea.
| | 00:51 | You can tell it to remember this
action for that particular site for all PDF
| | 00:55 | documents, which will make it easier in
the future, or if it was a URL that you
| | 01:00 | didn't want to go to, of
course, you could click Block.
| | 01:02 | If I want to import form data, for
instance, if I want to pre-populate a number
| | 01:06 | of forms with commonly used data like
my Name, my Address, my Phone Number and
| | 01:10 | so forth, I can store that data as
what's called an FDF file, Forms Data Format
| | 01:15 | file and then invoke it with this button.
| | 01:18 | If I want to clean up the
form, I can press Reset Form.
| | 01:21 | If I want to submit this form by email,
it gives me the option to choose my
| | 01:26 | Desktop Email Application or Internet
Email, and whichever I want to choose.
| | 01:31 | So all these actions have been assigned to
these buttons when these buttons were created.
| | 01:35 | Let's see how we do that.
| | 01:36 | I'll get my Select Object Tool and we will
look at this first one, Execute a menu item.
| | 01:42 | In the Actions tab you choose a
Trigger and then you choose the Action that
| | 01:45 | that trigger sets off.
| | 01:46 | The trigger is what happens with the mouse.
| | 01:49 | Mouse Up, most common trigger, it's when
you click, let go of your mouse button.
| | 01:53 | Mouse Down is as the mouse button bottoms out.
| | 01:56 | That might seem a little early to some
folks that might catch people by surprise.
| | 02:00 | There are times when it's appropriate,
but Mouse Up is the most common trigger.
| | 02:04 | Mouse Enter and Exit, if you think of
the button as sort of a hotspot area,
| | 02:08 | Mouse Enter is as your cursor enters
the area of the button, Mouse Exit is as
| | 02:12 | you roll out of the area of the button.
| | 02:14 | On Focus and On Blur, you may never
use this, but here is what they mean.
| | 02:19 | If you are tabbing through a form,
from field to field to field, a button
| | 02:23 | field is a field as well.
| | 02:24 | So if you hit Tab and you land on a
button, that's the On Focus moment.
| | 02:28 | If you hit a Tab again and you jump off
the button, that's the On Blur moment.
| | 02:32 | Execute a menu item is the
action that's been applied.
| | 02:35 | Let's see how we add an action.
| | 02:36 | I am going to Delete this.
| | 02:38 | Don't worry that it keeps executed
menu item populating that Select Action
| | 02:42 | field, that's just the default,
it's at the top of the list.
| | 02:45 | We have to sort of ignore it.
| | 02:47 | So I am going to choose Mouse Up and then
for my Action, maybe I'll say Open a web link.
| | 02:52 | So when I choose that, you have to
remember not to hit Close, you actually
| | 02:56 | haven't done the job yet.
| | 02:57 | You have to hit this Add button and here is why?
| | 02:59 | You can actually have multiple
actions attached to a single mouse click.
| | 03:03 | You could set a bunch of stuff in motion.
| | 03:05 | When I click Add it says, well, what's the URL?
| | 03:08 | I am going to send everybody to lynda.com.
| | 03:11 | When I click OK, you can see that
that's been added, and when I close now it no
| | 03:17 | longer executes a menu item,
now it sends somebody to a URL.
| | 03:20 | But now you can see it when you test it.
| | 03:23 | Always test your buttons, make
sure that they do what you want.
| | 03:26 | If you're asking it to open a file,
make sure that the directory path to that
| | 03:30 | file is still intact, otherwise, you
are going to surprise your end user.
| | 03:33 | But this gives you an
idea of the power of buttons.
| | 03:35 | They really are the engines in
forms, they make stuff happen.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Using show/hide fields| 00:00 | The Show/Hide option for button
fields lets you do some really
| | 00:03 | interesting things.
| | 00:04 | Notice at the bottom of the page it
says, Roll your mouse over a thumbnail
| | 00:08 | to see a larger image. So let's try that.
| | 00:11 | As I roll my mouse over the thumbnail,
a larger version of the image appears,
| | 00:15 | same for all of these.
| | 00:17 | This is really pretty, but think of
the possibilities, if you're creating an
| | 00:21 | educational file for example, you might
want to show something larger, so that
| | 00:25 | they see more detail, when you're
trying to teach somebody how to do something.
| | 00:28 | So there are some really
neat possibilities with this.
| | 00:30 | So let's see how this gets started.
| | 00:32 | I'm going to go to the starting version
of the file and when I choose my Select
| | 00:37 | Object Tool, you can see what's in place.
| | 00:39 | There are large buttons with images
in them, but they're initially hidden.
| | 00:43 | So the Show/Hide field function works this way.
| | 00:47 | You need one field to act as a
trigger, you need the other field to hold
| | 00:51 | the artwork, so the trigger causes the
artwork containing field to appear or disappear.
| | 00:56 | So let's make a couple of sets of these.
| | 00:58 | I'm going to go into Edit so that I can
choose my Button Tool and I'm going to
| | 01:03 | create first my large field
that's going to contain the artwork.
| | 01:08 | I don't have to be really exact with this.
| | 01:09 | I just need to make sure that this
button field is big enough to cover that
| | 01:12 | original artwork in the background.
| | 01:15 | So I can approximate it by
the existing button size.
| | 01:18 | I'm going to go to All Properties, I'm
going to start from the left, I'm going
| | 01:23 | to name this Button3.
| | 01:24 | Go to Appearance, I'm going to fill it
with white so that it covers up any part
| | 01:30 | of the artwork that's underneath.
| | 01:31 | You're never going to see any two these
big buttons at the same time, so that's
| | 01:34 | why they don't need to be exactly the same size.
| | 01:36 | I just want to make sure that they're big
enough so that they hide the original artwork.
| | 01:40 | And then for Options, I'm going to choose
Icon only so that I can go and select artwork.
| | 01:46 | And then when I click
Choose Icon, I can go browsing.
| | 01:49 | So this is going to be my Image_3_Big.
| | 01:52 | It helps if you name these something
you're going to remember as you start
| | 01:55 | constructing these things.
| | 01:57 | Choose Open, click OK, and under
Advanced, I'm going to ask it to scale it if
| | 02:02 | it's too small, and I want to
make sure that it Fits to bound.
| | 02:06 | If the proportions of the image are
substantially different from the button, and
| | 02:09 | that's the case with this one,
it's not really going to matter much.
| | 02:12 | I want it as big as possible.
| | 02:14 | But if there's going to be some gap,
because I've colored the button white in
| | 02:18 | the background, it's going to
cover up anything underneath.
| | 02:20 | So everything will be okay.
| | 02:21 | I need to do one more thing.
| | 02:23 | Remember that we couldn't see this
artwork initially, so I'll go back to General
| | 02:27 | and under Common Properties,
choose Hidden and then Close.
| | 02:32 | Since I'm still in Edit mode,
of course, I can still see it.
| | 02:35 | But let's set up the trigger.
| | 02:36 | Again, I choose the Button Tool and I'm
going to click and drag, create a little
| | 02:40 | button, go to the Button Properties.
| | 02:44 | Under General, I'm going to call this Button3a.
| | 02:48 | So 3 is going to be my big button, 3a
is my little button, or I could call it
| | 02:53 | Button3trigger for that matter.
| | 02:55 | The thinking here is that because you
kind of have to keep both of these buttons
| | 02:58 | in mind when you start to set up the
action, it behooves you to name them
| | 03:01 | something that you'll remember.
| | 03:04 | Appearance, I'm going to set this to
white, in case there's a little bit of the
| | 03:07 | artwork peeking out underneath.
| | 03:08 | I'm going to go to Options, switch
to Icon only, and go choose my icon.
| | 03:14 | There's little bug that you'll
see sometimes on both Mac and PC.
| | 03:17 | Sometimes this Choose
Icon button won't be active.
| | 03:20 | It's just a little bug, it's been there for
a while, and you'll learn to live with it.
| | 03:24 | If that happens to you, just click the
Actions tab just for a moment, come back
| | 03:28 | to Options, and you'll see that this is alive.
| | 03:30 | When I choose Icon, again I'm going
to go hunting, and this is going to be
| | 03:34 | my Image_3_thumbnail.
| | 03:35 | Click Open and OK and again, I'm going
to go to Advanced, set it to Scale if
| | 03:43 | the icon is too small and it is a bit,
then Fit to bounds and let's see if that
| | 03:47 | makes a difference.
| | 03:48 | Yes, now it fills up the button.
| | 03:49 | So now I've made this cute,
but I have to give it a job.
| | 03:52 | So I go to Actions, then I
choose Mouse Enter as my Trigger.
| | 03:56 | As I roll into that area, I
wanted to make something happen;
| | 04:00 | I wanted to show that field.
| | 04:01 | As I exit, I wanted to hide that field.
| | 04:04 | So Mouse Enters the Trigger, the Action
is Show/hide a field, when I click Add,
| | 04:09 | then I have to tell Acrobat
what field I want it to show.
| | 04:12 | I want it to show Button3 and click OK.
| | 04:17 | I have to add a second action so that
it knows what to do upon mouse exit.
| | 04:22 | It still says Show/hide a field,
because it kind of remembers the last choice.
| | 04:25 | I click Add again, and this
time I tell it to Hide Button3.
| | 04:29 | So if you sort of think of yourself
as giving instructions to Acrobat, you
| | 04:33 | have to remember to choose the
appropriate option, Show or Hide and then the
| | 04:36 | appropriate target.
| | 04:38 | So you're telling Acrobat, hey,
I want you to hide Button3.
| | 04:41 | Click OK and Close and it's
always a good idea to test.
| | 04:45 | So I'm going to close Form Editing, get
my Hand Tool, roll over my trigger, and
| | 04:50 | sure enough, my image shows up.
| | 04:52 | So let's make another one.
| | 04:53 | I'm going to go into Edit;
| | 04:55 | I'm going to choose my Button Tool.
| | 04:57 | First I'm going to make the big
field that's going to hold the big image.
| | 05:01 | And again, it doesn't have to be perfect.
| | 05:03 | In this case, it just has to
cover up the underlying artwork.
| | 05:06 | I'm going to All Properties
and start working my way over.
| | 05:09 | I'm going to call this Button4.
| | 05:12 | Its initial state is going to be Hidden.
| | 05:15 | Go to Appearance, I'm going to give it
that white Fill Color so that it covers
| | 05:19 | up anything underneath.
| | 05:20 | Go to Options and go shopping for my image.
| | 05:23 | Choose Icon only, Choose Icon, browse, and
this is going to be Image_4_Big, and Open.
| | 05:31 | Click OK.
| | 05:33 | Go to Advanced and ask it to scale a bit.
| | 05:36 | Fit to bounds, click OK, and Close.
| | 05:41 | So it doesn't have an action, because
it just sits there and waits for this
| | 05:44 | other button to tell it when to show up.
| | 05:46 | Back again to my Button Tool to make the
trigger, click and drag and create that
| | 05:51 | button area, go to All
Properties, start working my way over.
| | 05:55 | And this is going to be
Button4, I'll name it trigger.
| | 06:00 | It's of course going to be visible.
| | 06:01 | Under Appearance, I'm going to give it
the Fill Color of white, again, to cover
| | 06:05 | up the underlying artwork.
| | 06:06 | I'm going to go to Options, choose Icon only;
| | 06:09 | go hunting for my Icon, browse, and
this is going to be Image_4_thumb.
| | 06:13 | Now if you noticed that all of these
donor graphics if you will are all PDFs.
| | 06:19 | So you have to remember to
save your artwork as a PDF.
| | 06:22 | Open, OK, Advanced, Fit to bounds,
scale it if it's too small, click OK, and
| | 06:31 | then give it the job.
| | 06:32 | Actions, Mouse Enter, it's
going to show that field.
| | 06:36 | See, it remembers from the last
session, it wants to Show/hide a field.
| | 06:40 | That gives you a little head start.
| | 06:42 | What field is it going to show?
| | 06:43 | We have to say Show Button4, click OK.
| | 06:46 | Then we want to add the Mouse Exit
behavior, which is Show/hide a field again,
| | 06:53 | and we tell it this time
we want it to hide Button4.
| | 06:57 | So when we look at the entries here,
this tells you what it's going to do.
| | 07:00 | At Enter, it's going to Show/hide a field.
| | 07:02 | On the Exit, it's going to Show/hide a field.
| | 07:04 | So we have to establish both of
those actions for this same button.
| | 07:08 | Click Close and then again, always a
good idea to test, click Close Form
| | 07:12 | Editing, get the Hands Tool, and sure enough.
| | 07:17 | So once you get the hang of
this, it gets really easy.
| | 07:19 | It's a little confusing at first, but
just remember there's a field that you
| | 07:23 | want to show and hide and there's a
trigger, it's the other button that's going
| | 07:26 | to show and hide that field.
| | 07:27 | By the way, you're not limited to just
showing and hiding one field, you can
| | 07:31 | actually have multiple buttons
show up when you choose that action.
| | 07:34 | But in this case, it's just the
thumbnail and the large version of the image.
| | 07:38 | So think how practical this could be
when you're trying to create educational
| | 07:41 | pieces, or even just something pretty like this.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Creating signature fields| 00:00 | If you want the user to be able to
sign the file, you could have them printed
| | 00:04 | out, sign it, scan it, fax it, and all
that, but you can actually have them sign
| | 00:08 | it directly in the Acrobat file.
| | 00:10 | So let's create a signature field
and that's this next-to-last tool,
| | 00:16 | the signature field.
| | 00:17 | When I click and drag, I'll just name this sig.
| | 00:21 | Let's double-check the Properties.
| | 00:23 | Border Color and Fill
Color are None, that's great.
| | 00:26 | Now you can make some choices to
govern what happens when this is signed.
| | 00:31 | If I choose the default which is
Nothing happens when signed, that means
| | 00:34 | nothing happens to change the file or
lock it or prevent somebody from doing
| | 00:38 | something else to the file.
| | 00:39 | If I like to be a little more careful, I
can choose Mark as read-only and then I
| | 00:43 | could say that All fields or Just these fields.
| | 00:47 | If there are a lot of fields, you
could say, All of these fields except maybe
| | 00:51 | one or two that you think
they might need to revisit.
| | 00:53 | If there are a bunch of fields and you
only want to protect one or two, then you
| | 00:56 | would use just these fields.
| | 00:59 | You can imagine this might lead to some issues.
| | 01:01 | If somebody has filled out a form and
misspelled something, they only realize it
| | 01:05 | after they sign, they might
be a little annoyed with you.
| | 01:08 | It means that they have to close the
file without saving it and then start over.
| | 01:12 | So use this cautiously.
| | 01:14 | Sometimes I think it's sort of overkill.
| | 01:16 | I'm just going to choose Nothing
happens when signed and click Close.
| | 01:20 | So how do you sign a PDF?
| | 01:23 | I'm going to show you in later
exercise how to create a digital ID, but I
| | 01:26 | already have a digital ID
that I can use to sign this PDF.
| | 01:30 | So when I click in the Signature field,
it says I want to sign this document.
| | 01:35 | Do I need to make a new ID? Nope, I have one.
| | 01:37 | I'm going to use my existing file.
| | 01:39 | So I go hunting for that file.
| | 01:42 | It's BetsyJ_Carruthers.
| | 01:44 | Don't worry, she's not a
real person, she's imaginary.
| | 01:47 | I need to know the password for this and
I happen to know that it is catlady2012.
| | 01:53 | When I click Next, it says this is
going to be added to my digital ID so that I
| | 01:57 | can use it in the future. And then Finish.
| | 02:01 | It doesn't look like a signature;
| | 02:02 | it doesn't have artwork to it.
| | 02:04 | I can actually change that if I want to,
but I think this will work just fine.
| | 02:08 | This isn't utterly bulletproof.
| | 02:10 | Obviously, I'm not Betsy
and yet I'm signing this form.
| | 02:14 | But it's pretty good.
| | 02:15 | I think in a reasonable environment,
you don't have to worry about somebody
| | 02:18 | forging your digital signature.
| | 02:20 | Certainly, you're going to be
protecting it with your password.
| | 02:23 | So they really can't sign unless they know that.
| | 02:26 | They can't even invoke the signature.
| | 02:27 | So when I click Sign, notice
that it asks me to re-save it.
| | 02:31 | So I'm just going to call this
signedcontract and there we go.
| | 02:37 | And you can see the digital signature.
| | 02:39 | So it doesn't look like handwriting,
but it proves that Betsy has read
| | 02:43 | this contract and that she signed it,
because she knows the password for
| | 02:46 | her own digital signature.
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| Duplicating fields| 00:00 | Generally speaking you want each
field in your form to have a unique name,
| | 00:04 | but there are times when having
multiple fields with the same name can save
| | 00:07 | you little bit of time.
| | 00:09 | Let me show you what I mean.
| | 00:10 | In this Contract, the signer
needs to put her name on every page.
| | 00:14 | Instead of having to enter it on
every page, watch what happens when
| | 00:17 | it's entered on page 1.
| | 00:19 | When I go to page 2, look that
field is automatically filled.
| | 00:22 | The only difference is that the
formatting is different from field to field, but
| | 00:26 | the content is the same.
| | 00:27 | So how does this happen?
| | 00:29 | When I switch to my Select Object tool
you'll see that field is called Name on
| | 00:33 | page 1, on page 2, on page 3.
| | 00:36 | So to Acrobat's way of
thinking, it's the same field.
| | 00:40 | It's three instances of the same field,
so the data that goes into one, shows
| | 00:44 | up in all the rest.
| | 00:45 | The formatting is different because you
can change the formatting of one of the
| | 00:48 | twin fields, but it still doesn't
change the data, so let's see how we do this.
| | 00:53 | In the starting file, I'll choose Edit,
Acrobat offers to make the forms for me,
| | 00:58 | that's going to mess things up, so I click No.
| | 01:01 | Get my text field tool, click and drag,
make my Name field, I don't really
| | 01:06 | need to check the properties, I know that it
has a fill and a border of None, so that's fine.
| | 01:11 | Now to duplicate it on the other pages,
just to prove to you, it isn't already
| | 01:15 | there, we'll take a look at page 2.
| | 01:16 | Going back to page 1, I select the
field, right-click and choose Duplicate.
| | 01:23 | If you notice there is something that
looks very similar here in this contextual
| | 01:25 | menu, Multiple Fields,
Duplicate, what's the difference?
| | 01:28 | Duplicate fields goes across many
pages of your document, whereas Multiple
| | 01:33 | Fields only happen on the page that you're
on, and that's really easy to get confused.
| | 01:37 | My friend Tom came up with an
acronym that might help you remember DAMP,
| | 01:43 | D-A-M-P, Duplicate Across Many Pages.
| | 01:47 | So I don't know if that'll help you
remember, but frankly, that was the best we
| | 01:49 | could come up with, so it'll have to do for now.
| | 01:52 | So when I choose Duplicate, the little
dialog comes up asking which pages I'd
| | 01:56 | like to Duplicate this field on, I
click OK because I wanted on all of them.
| | 02:00 | Now you can see it shows up on page 2
and page 3, you don't get any kind of
| | 02:05 | confirming alert, Acrobat just does the job.
| | 02:08 | What if I want the formatting
to be different on one page?
| | 02:11 | Perhaps it's page with more stuff in
the neighborhood and I need to make that
| | 02:14 | name field smaller, I could do that.
| | 02:16 | I can come in here, double-click,
and if I need to, I could make the Text
| | 02:20 | smaller, I can even change the Font, I
could change the Color, for that matter.
| | 02:25 | I can't really think of a good reason
to change the color or the font, but just
| | 02:29 | know that you can, that doesn't
change the data that's entered.
| | 02:32 | When I click Close Form Editing and go
back to page 1 and I put in the signers
| | 02:37 | name, watch what happens on page 2.
| | 02:41 | The formatting is different, the field
is smaller, but the name is the same, so
| | 02:44 | the data is the same.
| | 02:46 | So think how this might save you some
time in a document such as a Contract or a
| | 02:51 | Requisition form or something like
that, where you have repeating data,
| | 02:54 | something that has to show up more than
once, make you field once, duplicate it
| | 02:58 | and position it and you can save
yourself and also the person who's filling out
| | 03:02 | the form a little bit of work.
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| Multiple fields| 00:00 | In this order form there are multiple fields
in each row and then there are multiple rows.
| | 00:06 | So if I want to order a product, I
enter the number, choose the item that I
| | 00:10 | want, put in the price, and because
the math has already been setup in this
| | 00:15 | form, Acrobat actually does some math for me.
| | 00:18 | This lesson isn't about the math, it's
about creating the fields, we'll talk
| | 00:21 | about the math later.
| | 00:22 | When I switch to the Select Object tool
and you see how many form fields are in
| | 00:26 | the page, this looks sort of
overwhelming, you started thinking, oh, that's
| | 00:29 | going to be a lot of work I've got fill
out each row, I have to give each field
| | 00:33 | a unique name, this is going to take me forever.
| | 00:36 | I have some good news for you, Acrobat
is actually going to make this job much
| | 00:40 | easier, let's look at the beginning file.
| | 00:42 | When I go to the start file, the first
row is already in place, so when I choose
| | 00:48 | that row of fields, notice that each
one of course has unique name, Number,
| | 00:53 | short for Description to desc, Price and Total.
| | 00:56 | When I right-click after I have
them all selected the option to Place
| | 01:01 | Multiple Fields comes up.
| | 01:04 | This gets a little confusing, because it
says, Copy selected fields down 2 times.
| | 01:09 | You already have one row, so your first
thought is that well, I need 1, 2, 3, 4,
| | 01:13 | 5, 6, but wouldn't I just need five copies?
| | 01:16 | Well, it's the total.
| | 01:18 | So if I need 6 totals for my 6
row, I have to make that Number 6.
| | 01:22 | You notice that it doesn't line up with
my artwork, but I can change the height
| | 01:26 | and it's talking about the Overall
Size, at least it tells you that here.
| | 01:30 | So as I increase that number, you
can see those fields spread apart.
| | 01:35 | It's almost impossible to hit your
artwork exactly, that's not far enough,
| | 01:39 | that's too far, but that's
okay, that gets me close enough.
| | 01:42 | Notice too, you have the option to move
them Left and Right, Up and Down, so if
| | 01:46 | I needed to move them all to the left
or move them all to the right, I can.
| | 01:51 | So I think that's close enough,
I click OK, and there we go.
| | 01:55 | Notice what happened with the field Names,
remember originally this was just call Number.
| | 02:00 | Acrobat, because it duped it, and knew
it had to give them all unique names,
| | 02:04 | changed that name to Number.0, .1, .2,
.3 and so forth, so see what I mean?
| | 02:09 | Hasn't that saved us a ton of work?
| | 02:11 | The fields don't line up perfectly with
the artwork, so I feel compelled to fix that.
| | 02:16 | So I'm going to select the bottom row
by just dragging a marquee across it, and
| | 02:21 | I'm going to use my arrow keys to
just scoot it up a little bit, so it's
| | 02:23 | centered vertically in that row.
| | 02:26 | Then I'm going to have to take each
column and do one of those Distribute
| | 02:30 | Vertically operations.
| | 02:31 | So I just select a column, right-click
choose Align, Distribute or
| | 02:35 | Center>Distribute Vertically,
everything is nice and neat, it's a little
| | 02:40 | work, but boy, it's not as much work as
creating every one of these fields from scratch.
| | 02:45 | So let's go through, fix each column,
and then everything is going to be being
| | 02:48 | nice and neat, and here's the last one,
Distribute Vertically, and there are all
| | 02:54 | my fields and that took almost no time at all.
| | 02:57 | So remember that Multiple Fields
when you need to fill out something like
| | 03:01 | this in order form, some kind of
metrics, look at all the time that Acrobat
| | 03:05 | saves you.
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| Editing forms| 00:00 | You think you're finished with the form,
and you know what happens, either you
| | 00:03 | change your mind or your boss asks you
to make a change or your client wants to
| | 00:07 | make a change, you
actually don't have to start over.
| | 00:11 | I want you to think of form fields as
floating on a separate layer up above
| | 00:15 | the underlying artwork.
| | 00:16 | Think of that artwork is sort of a substrate.
| | 00:19 | Let's see how many form
fields we have in this document.
| | 00:21 | It wouldn't be any fun to start over
and have to re-create them, and the good
| | 00:24 | news is that if you need to change
that underlying artwork, you don't have to
| | 00:28 | start over and re-create them.
| | 00:30 | Think of it like sliding in new
artwork under those floating fields.
| | 00:34 | So I want to replace this
artwork with another pdf.
| | 00:38 | I go to the Pages tab, see my Page
Thumbnails and this little icon gives you the
| | 00:44 | Options dealing with pages.
| | 00:46 | Click that little icon and choose
Replace Pages, and then let me find
| | 00:51 | my replacement file.
| | 00:54 | There's my ReplacementPage, select that,
I want to replace the only page I have
| | 00:59 | with the only page that
exists in the other document.
| | 01:02 | Although, this kind of gives you an
idea that if you needed to replace say
| | 01:05 | pages 2 and 3 of this document with
pages 1 and 2 of that other document, you
| | 01:10 | could specify that here. And click OK.
| | 01:13 | You get a little alert and here's why,
it's not just Acrobat being polite.
| | 01:17 | This is another one of those
functions for which there is no undo.
| | 01:21 | So you would have to revert and start over.
| | 01:23 | So anytime you see that little yellow
triangle, it means you're about to do
| | 01:26 | something for which there's no
undo, that's why Acrobat warns you.
| | 01:30 | Click Yes, and notice that the artwork has
changed, but that my form fields are still there.
| | 01:35 | Isn't that handy?
| | 01:36 | There are other things that I might
want to change in this file though.
| | 01:39 | When I switch back to my Hand Tool to
test filling out the form, when I hit the
| | 01:44 | Tab key though, notice it takes
me way down to the City field.
| | 01:47 | Generally speaking, as you're building
forms, Acrobat sort of recognizes that
| | 01:52 | row structure and it keeps track
of the tab order sensibly for you.
| | 01:56 | So, I actually messed this one up on
purpose, so you can see how to fix it, but
| | 02:00 | every now and then they will get out of whack.
| | 02:02 | So we need to fix that.
| | 02:04 | I go to Tools>Edit and then Other
Tasks>Edit Fields>Show Tab Number.
| | 02:11 | So this is sort of buried.
| | 02:12 | It's Other Tasks>Edit Field>Show Tab Numbers.
| | 02:15 | And this says now To change the tab
order, first sort the tab order manually,
| | 02:20 | and then you can drag them up and down.
| | 02:21 | Well, I'll show you the long way to
do this and then may be a better way to
| | 02:25 | start, just so you are aware of both methods.
| | 02:28 | So the First Name field is 1, the Last
Name field ought to be 2, when we look at
| | 02:32 | this list of tab order, we can see
that that Last Name field is down here.
| | 02:37 | I can drag it up so that it falls just
beneath the First Name, and now it's 1, 2.
| | 02:42 | I could keep changing all the rest of
these, but let me show you, I think an
| | 02:46 | easier way to do this.
| | 02:47 | I am going to Close Form Editing.
| | 02:49 | I am going to go back over to my Pages
Pane and this is one of those things that
| | 02:53 | is really not discoverable, unless
somebody tells you that it's there.
| | 02:56 | It's sort of hard to find.
| | 02:57 | You actually choose the Page
Thumbnail, not this little guy up here.
| | 03:01 | Right click on the Page Thumbnail,
at the bottom of the list choose Page
| | 03:06 | Properties, and choose Tab
Order, check Use Row Order.
| | 03:11 | And so let's see if that
cleans things up for us.
| | 03:12 | This would be great.
| | 03:13 | When I click OK and I collapse my
little Page Panel, let's take a look at the
| | 03:19 | numbers just to be sure, I am
going to choose Edit, Other Tasks, Edit
| | 03:23 | Fields>Show Tab Numbers, 1, 2, 3, 4
yup, it cleaned everything up for us.
| | 03:28 | So I would try that approach first
over there in the Pages Panel, and then if
| | 03:32 | you need to tweak it, then you can
manually move them in that Tab Order dialog.
| | 03:37 | I am going to unshow my Tab Numbers,
I think everything is pretty good now.
| | 03:40 | So I'm going to Close Form Editing, I am
going to test it just to be sure, and Reset.
| | 03:45 | This is always a good idea, anytime
you are ready you think to deploy a form,
| | 03:51 | test it yourself, maybe you have
somebody who's not accustomed to filling it out
| | 03:54 | tested, I think an innocent bystander is
always really helpful. And I check Reset.
| | 03:59 | There is one more thing I might want to do.
| | 04:01 | Maybe I want to do something to the
Fill and Stroke around these fields.
| | 04:04 | And I don't want to have to
touch every field to do it.
| | 04:06 | When I choose my select Object Tool, I
can throw a Marquee over multiple fields,
| | 04:12 | right-click and choose Properties.
| | 04:14 | Now notice that not all the little
tabs show up, up here, so you will find
| | 04:18 | that there are some properties you can
change on multiple fields at once, and
| | 04:22 | some that you can't.
| | 04:23 | But if I want to change the
Appearance and I want to give each one of these
| | 04:26 | fields a sort of a light green color, I can.
| | 04:29 | This is sort of arbitrary, but it's
really just to show you that you can do this.
| | 04:33 | I can also change the Size of
the text in all the fields at once.
| | 04:37 | So there are some common properties
that you can change for multiple selected
| | 04:40 | fields, you don't have access to all
of the properties, but this still can
| | 04:43 | save you a lot of work.
| | 04:45 | So I will switch back to the Hand Tool,
and there I have modified my form by
| | 04:49 | putting in new artwork underneath my fields.
| | 04:51 | I have changed the tab order by
going to the Pages Panel in the Page
| | 04:55 | Properties and fixing that.
| | 04:57 | And I have also changed the properties
for multiple text fields all at once by
| | 05:01 | using a right-click and choosing Properties.
| | 05:03 | So don't give up hope when somebody
asks you to Edit a form, all is not lost,
| | 05:08 | you don't usually have to start completely over.
| | 05:10 | Hopefully that's good news to you.
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| Reading barcodes| 00:01 | Acrobat has the ability to encode the data
in a filled out form in a barcode format.
| | 00:05 | You'll need specialized hardware and
software to read that barcode, but let's
| | 00:09 | take a look at what the options are.
| | 00:11 | The Barcode tool is the last form tool,
when you click and drag as you would
| | 00:15 | with the other form field tools,
you get an informational alert.
| | 00:19 | And it's telling you that if you want
to read the data in the barcode, you are
| | 00:22 | going to have to have Adobe's
Barcoded Paper Forms Solution.
| | 00:26 | Notice that it says separate license
required, that's because it's not part of
| | 00:29 | Acrobat, it's part of the
lifecycle family of enterprise solutions.
| | 00:34 | But let's do see what the options are.
| | 00:36 | When I Close Form Editing and I go back into
the form, look at the appearance of the barcode.
| | 00:41 | Watch what happens when the data changes.
| | 00:43 | Let's say that Sarah Jane gets married.
| | 00:45 | When I tab out of that field, you can
see the appearance of the barcode changed.
| | 00:49 | All these little squares are
actually encoding that data.
| | 00:53 | Let's say that, the name
of the Department changes.
| | 00:57 | Again, when I tab, which commits to
that data, you can see the appearance of
| | 01:01 | the barcode changed.
| | 01:02 | But again, unless you have that specialized
solution, there's no way for you to read this.
| | 01:07 | Since it's an enterprise solution, it's
not something that you buy as, let's say
| | 01:10 | a shrink-wrapped product.
| | 01:12 | It's not something you can download from
the Adobe website, you actually have to
| | 01:15 | talk to someone in sales at Adobe and
they can give you the further information.
| | 01:19 | If this is this something you think is a
good solution for your needs, but let's
| | 01:23 | look at one more option
that might be sort of handy.
| | 01:26 | You can change the Symbology of that barcode.
| | 01:29 | What that means is the
way the data is represented.
| | 01:32 | I bet you have seen QR codes, when I
choose QR code, this particular field says
| | 01:36 | it's too small, but we can fix that.
| | 01:38 | As I pull on the edge of it to
change the dimensions, now you can see
| | 01:41 | the barcode inside.
| | 01:43 | You may even have a QR code Reader on
your smartphone and you can read this.
| | 01:48 | The readout isn't very elegant, but it does
give you all the data that's on all the fields.
| | 01:52 | So, when I switch back to my Hand
Tool, let's say that oh darn things
| | 01:56 | didn't work out with Mr. Mountbatten.
| | 01:58 | Watch the appearance of the QR code field.
| | 02:01 | When I tab out of that field, you can
see its appearance changed, because it's
| | 02:04 | encoding a different set of data.
| | 02:07 | In the large enterprise, you'll probably
need something more elaborate than this
| | 02:10 | QR code solution, but this gives
you an idea of what's possible.
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