Tuesday, November 27, 2012

Acrobat -- Create Live Filtered List




Direct purchase using PayPal ($50 only per license)!

Working with very long drop-downs can be a handful, especially since you can't set the size of the drop-down menu that opens. A much easier approach is to use a "live" filter, similar to the Google Auto-Suggest feature, where you start to type the text that you want to look for, and a menu pops-up appears with the relevant options. Up until now this was not possible to do in a PDF, but now it is!

Using this new script you can easily and quickly set up a plain text field to act as the "filter" for a combo- or a list-box field.

For example, let's say you have a list of all 50 states, and you want the user to be able to find their state quickly and easily:

(click to enlarge)


You run the script and select your fields, and the additional options like whether the filter should be case-sensitive (set to false in this case), and whether to show all items if the filter is blank (set to true below):


After doing so, when you enter a letter into the filter text field, the options in the list immediately change to just those starting with the entered text:



As you type more letters, the options reduce even further:



If you wish to see this in action for yourself, the file shown above can be downloaded from here, for free.

For more information about this tool, you can contact me directly.

Wednesday, November 21, 2012

Acrobat/Reader -- Print With Field Names


Direct purchase using PayPal ($25 only per license)!

Sometimes when working with a complex PDF form you want to have an indication of where each field is located. A printed copy of the form with the name of each field placed next to it can be a useful tool for that purpose, which is exactly what this tool does.

When you click on the "Print With Field Names"-button that this tool adds to Acrobat (or Reader), the file will be printed as usual, but with the names of all of the form fields just above the fields themselves (the names appear in red).

For example, this section of a PDF page:

Will look like this when we print it out:

After printing, the file is returned to its original state.  

Note: To use this tool in Reader, the file must have the right to add new form fields applied to it.

For more information about this tool, you can contact me directly.