.pdf question.

[onenormalman]

After downloaded a Permission Form created by Acrobat online I have to print it out on paper to fill in needed infos and then make copies to give it to people to finish the rest of the form. I can't fill in, modify, adjust, ... the online .pdf at all. Is there a way that I can "work" on that form and then email to people to "work" on it and finally email that complete form back to me?

 

[Brazen]

First of all, you might want to look at pdfcreator as an alternative to using Acrobat online, just FYI. As for your issue, you would have to buy the full version of Acrobat. With full-blown Adobe Acrobat you can create pdf's with editable areas, just as boxes for people to type in their name, etc. Or a better alternative may be Foxit PDF Editor. The Foxit pdf reader is far and away better than Adobe's Reader, so I would put my money on their pdf editor being a good buy.

 

[onenormalman]

Originally posted by: Brazen
First of all, you might want to look at pdfcreator as an alternative to using Acrobat online, just FYI. As for your issue, you would have to buy the full version of Acrobat. With full-blown Adobe Acrobat you can create pdf's with editable areas, just as boxes for people to type in their name, etc. Or a better alternative may be Foxit PDF Editor. The Foxit pdf reader is far and away better than Adobe's Reader, so I would put my money on their pdf editor being a good buy.

I'm a volunteer so I prefer free software, any input?

 

[Brazen]

Who created the pdf? Would it be possible to to distribute the form as another type of document? Or maybe even use php or ruby to create an online form? I've looked high and low for a good open source program for working with pdfs, but there just aren't any that do anything other than image a file and output a pdf. Do you use Microsoft Word (personally I would prefer OpenOffice)? I think there is an option to lock a doc or odt document and only allow editing certain parts. Or maybe OpenOffice has more advanced control over the pdf it outputs than I've figured out.

Or with a spreadsheet (Excel or Calc) I know you can lock certain cells. You could layout the form in a spreadsheet and lock all the cells except leave cells unlocked for people to put in their information. Make sure when printed your layout fits on a single page too. This is actually how we do time sheets at the company I work for.

 

[onenormalman]

Every time my troops (boy and girl scouts) have an activity I have to download a form from council online, print 1 on paper to fill in what are needed (event, time, leaders info, ...) and then make copies to give them to parents to fill in their parts and then I collect them back.

I prefer some free software I can convert to editable file to email to parents. It must be "workable" where they can fill in the requirements and email back to me. Their parents are not all computer experts so it's better converted to text, not all computers have Microsoft Word and they might not want to install free Open Office. Some of them don't even like to use computer.

 

[homercles337]

Maybe not the best idea, but i just used Adobe Designer to fill out a non-editable pdf.

 

[Brazen]

I've thought of something... PDFCreator actually converts documents to quite a bit more types than just pdfs. You could use PDFCreator to convert the pdf to a bitmap or PNG image and edit it that way.