Adobe Acrobat XI - Manual (Page 242)

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Forms
Last updated 1/14/2015
If you want the image to be larger than the rollover area, or if you want the image to be in a different location than
the image button that pops up, use the Show/Hide A Field action. First, you specify an icon for the button that will
be shown and hidden. Next, you create a second button that acts as a hot spot when the mouse rolls over it. You do not
assign an icon for the appearance of the second button. Instead, you use the Actions tab to show the first button when
the pointer enters the second button, and hide the first button when the pointer exits.
Publishing interactive PDF web forms
More Help topics
PDF forms basics
About web forms
PDF forms can be useful for submitting and collecting information over the web. This is done by providing several
button actions that perform functions similar to some HTML scripting macros. You must have a Common Gateway
Interface (CGI) application on the web server to collect and route the data to a database. Any existing CGI application
that collects data from forms (in HTML, FDF, or XML format) can be used.
Before you make your forms web-ready, make sure that your form-field names match those set in the CGI application.
Note: CGI scripts must be built outside Acrobat, and their creation is not covered by the Adobe Acrobat product.
Add submit functionality
Use the Submit A Form action to send form data to an email address or to a web server by specifying a URL. You can
also use the submit button to send other files back to a server or database. For example, you can attach scanned images
or files to a form. The files are submitted along with the rest of the form data when you click the Submit button.
If your PDF form contains an email-based submit button, you can use the Distribute workflow to facilitate distributing
the form to others.
Select Tools > Forms > Edit, then select Button from the Add New Field list, and create a button.
1 Double-click the button to open the Button Properties dialog box.
2 Click the Actions tab, and select Mouse Up from the Select Trigger menu.
3 Select Submit A Form from the Select Action menu, and then click Add.
4 In the Submit Form Selections dialog box, type an entry in Enter A URL For This Link:
• To send the form data to a web server, enter the destination URL.
• To send the form data to an email address, enter mailto: followed by the email address. For example, type
mailto:[email protected].
5 Make additional changes to the available options, and then click OK to close the dialog box.
6 Change settings on other tabs in the Button Properties dialog box as needed, and then click Close.