Create fillable PDF forms – with Acrobat and free software

PDF (short for Portable Document Format) is probably one of the most popular file formats in most offices – thanks to its obvious ad­vant­ages: It can contain pages of text and dozens of images, yet the file size remains re­l­at­ively small, allowing PDF files to be sent quickly and easily via e-mail or the cloud. In addition, PDFs ensure that documents are re­pro­duced true to the original on any device, without com­prom­ising the present­a­tion or format­ting.

Forms are also an integral part of everyday working life: Be it simple par­ti­cipant lists for con­fer­ences, ap­plic­a­tion and re­gis­tra­tion forms, or complex invoices and financial overviews – forms regulate processes, record in­form­a­tion, and help to create an overview.

Using PDF forms can sig­ni­fic­antly reduce the amount of paper used in the office, since they can be filled in directly on the PC. This is much faster and less error-prone than manually entering in­form­a­tion. In addition, it is easier to share, analyse, and archive digital documents with customers or col­leagues.

We explain how you can create in­ter­act­ive PDF forms.

The reason why Word cannot be used to create fillable PDF forms is simply because the existing file formats of Microsoft and Adobe are not fully com­pat­ible, and the two companies are unlikely to be able to resolve the problem quickly. Therefore, ap­plic­a­tion forms and surveys designed with the Microsoft ap­plic­a­tion and saved in PDF format are only suitable for printing out on paper and filling in by hand. Under these cir­cum­stances, however, you can just as easily forego the in­ter­act­ive input fields and create a table with empty cells instead. For simple at­tend­ance lists, this is certainly suf­fi­cient, but for more complex projects, this solution leaves much to be desired.

Although it is possible to create a fillable PDF com­pletely free of charge, some users still swear by the pro­fes­sion­al, albeit costly standard solution: Adobe Acrobat.

This may be due to the fact that not every customer or colleague has an MS Office license or wants to use Open­Of­fice or Lib­reOf­fice. In addition, Adobe offers some special features that the com­pet­i­tion cannot keep up with. The most out­stand­ing feature is the automatic and sur­pris­ingly reliable re­cog­ni­tion feature: form fields in digital files and even scanned paper documents can be re­cog­nised. With Adobe software, you can even convert your MS Word form into a fillable PDF.

This is how it works:

1. In the toolbar, click on “Forms” “Start Form Wizard” (the procedure and menu names can vary greatly from version to version; our in­struc­tions refer to Adobe Acrobat 9).
    
2. In the newly-opened window, select the source of your form. Acrobat can open existing elec­tron­ic forms (PDF, Word, Excel, and many other formats) as well as convert scanned paper documents into a form (al­tern­at­ively, you can create a com­pletely new form using templates).
    
3. The form wizard auto­mat­ic­ally re­cog­nises all static form fields and names them according to the text sur­round­ing them. This process happens in an instant and has a high success rate. It can also happen that Acrobat forgets a field or mis­in­ter­prets a visual separator as a signature field. In this case, you can quickly correct the error by inserting, moving, or deleting form elements yourself.

Apart from this practical tool, the selection and func­tion­al­ity of the tools in Adobe Acrobat are very similar to those in MS Word, Open­Of­fice, and Lib­reOf­fice: Text fields, tick boxes, option, list fields, com­bin­a­tion fields, and buttons can be con­veni­ently arranged using the crosshair display and con­figured by double-clicking.

In addition, the program offers in­ter­est­ing ad­di­tion­al functions, some of which are described in more detail below:

• Fill in in­ter­act­ive forms faster by using the tab key to go from input field to input field instead of clicking on each element in­di­vidu­ally. In Adobe Acrobat, you can set the tab order to make this process as efficient as possible.
   
• In com­bin­a­tion with Adobe Sign, it is possible to add a field for a digital signature to the forms.
   
• Another tool in Acrobat is the barcode field. This auto­mat­ic­ally converts all form entries into a unique barcode that can be read and in­ter­preted with the ap­pro­pri­ate hardware. This fa­cil­it­ates the analysis and archiving of forms when they are returned to you in paper form by post or fax.
   
• Finished PDF forms can also be dis­trib­uted to customers and col­leagues via e-mail or an internal server using Adobe Acrobat. The program also makes it possible to track the feedback status and send automatic reminders in the event of missed ap­point­ments.

Adobe offers extensive tutorials for all ad­di­tion­al functions on its website. There is also a free trial version of Adobe Acrobat, which is valid for 14 days and enables you to create and edit PDFs and resize documents of this file type.

There are numerous al­tern­at­ives to Adobe Acrobat with similar functions. However, creating fillable PDF forms is usually only possible in the Pro versions of these programs (e.g. Qoppa PDF Studio, PDF-XChange Editor) or in fee-based trialware (e.g. Foxit Phantom PDF, Nitro Pro).

In­ter­act­ive PDF forms reduce paper waste and are also easy and quick to create. With Microsoft Office, however, you can only do the pre­lim­in­ary design work. To properly make a fillable PDF, you need Adobe Acrobat or an al­tern­at­ive program. But if you don't want to spend money on it, you can also use the free Open­Of­fice suite instead of the expensive Adobe solution. The free software also delivers sat­is­fact­ory results that can be read and filled in with almost any PDF reader.