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Transcript

In this hands-on tutorial, learn how to set up calculations, create an email submit button, and quickly update form pages without rebuilding all your existing form fields. To follow along, open the Project Estimate PDF. In the Tools pane, select Add under the Prepare Form tool to include it in the right-hand pane for easy access. Now some of the fields are already set up, but not the subtotal field here in the middle. So first, let’s select all the table fields, right-click and select Create Multiple Copies. This command is very useful if you have multiple rows in a table. Use the bounding box to select the second row of fields, and then you can use the arrow key to move into place. Notice the hierarchical naming, the dot 0 and 1, at the end of the form fields. This is very beneficial for calculations. To set up the subtotal calculation, double-click the field to open the properties, and make sure the format is set up as a number, select the Calculate tab and choose the Value is Product of, and then add the Rate and Hours field for the first row. You can leave the Properties dialog open and just select the second subtotal field, and do the same by selecting the second row Hour and Rate fields. With the Properties dialog still open, go ahead and select the Grand Total field. This should be a read-only field, so it can’t accidentally be modified. In the Format tab, choose the number format and currency symbol. Under the Calculation tab, select Value is the Sum of this time, and we don’t need to select all the fields, instead we can just select the subtotal field. Now let’s test the calculations by selecting Preview or using the keyboard shortcut P. We’ll just enter some test data, and notice how the calculation is automatically made. Next we’ll add a button to Submit by Email to collect the forms. To do this, exit Preview mode and select the Button field. We’ll add it to the bottom of the page. Let’s go ahead and name the field Submit by Email and select All Properties. In the Appearance tab, choose your colors and font. I’ll make this darker gray with white text. For display consistency, select a font above the line, because these are built into Acrobat. In the Options tab, select Label Only and type Submit by Email, so the button has a label. Under the Actions tab, select Submit a Form, and then enter Mail To colon and your email address. Down below, be sure to choose the complete PDF so you can easily collect the responses. And when you preview the form, you should see a hand appear when you hover over the Submit button. Now we’ve done quite a bit of work on the fields in this form by building custom calculations in a Submit button, but what happens if you need to revise the underlying content? You can use the Replace Pages command without touching all the existing form fields. To do this, open the left navigation pane and select Page Thumbnails. Right-click and choose Replace Pages. Choose the Project Estimate Replace Page PDF that was included in the file download. Confirm that you want to replace the pages. And this is a quick and easy way to make content revisions to your form without having to rebuild all your custom form fields. This hands-on tutorial was designed to walk through some advanced form field techniques that help build professional forms and accurately capture form data.