Chapter 1. Taking a Tour of Acrobat Forms

The chapters ahead cover many things you need to know to become a real PDF forms specialist. But now it's 4:45 p.m. on a Wednesday afternoon, and the boss wants you to hand over a fillable form to the IT department for hosting on the company's Web site. You have 15 minutes before jumping in the car, speeding home to make dinner, and trying to get a little recreational time before you face another day's work. Can you do it?

Fortunately, you've picked just the right tool whether it be Adobe Acrobat Standard, Acrobat Professional, or Acrobat Professional Extended on Windows or Adobe Acrobat Professional on the Macintosh. You also picked the right book because we'll show you how to create that form in just 15 minutes with time to spare.

Starting with a PDF Document

The first thing you need to do to begin your tour of Acrobat Forms is to start with a PDF file. All documents you open in any Acrobat viewer, including the free Adobe Reader software, begin with an authoring application document that is converted to a PDF file. Your favorite authoring tool can be used to construct the layout and look of your form designs, and from there you convert your file to a PDF document.

If you're starting with a Microsoft Office program, the process of converting the original Office document to a PDF file is made very easy ...

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