HairyBuddah

Using Office 03 on an XP machine, but I am hoping this is not a version specific question.

I am designing blank forms for my customers. I am not using pdf's because they cannot be saved in a filled in state. My clients are tracking a process over time, and need to be able to open and close the document. Many of them are not very computer literate but are generally familiar with Word.

The forms need to both fill-in-able on their computers, or if they just hit the print button and fill them in by hand.

My problem is with questions where they might need several lines to write. I know that if I just put a forms field on the page it will expand as much as they need to put in as much information as they want. That's great for people using the form on their PC. But what about for people who want to print the form and hand write in the answers?

On the one hand I need to leave a big blank for hand written responses. On the other hand if I have a big blank there with a form field at the top of, when the form field gets filled in with a multi line answer, it pushes the blank space down the page messing up my formatting and creating a really ugly document.

I tried putting text box on the document, figuring that would give me a preditctable, multi-line size for the form field. But you cannot put forms fields inside of a text box.

So how to I give my clients a space for an answer to an essay question that looks nice, is fixed in size, and can be filled in either with the forms function or by hand?

Hairy

macropod

Hi Hairy,

To allow for expandable fields that will provide enough space for both on-line and hand-written completion, simply put the formfields concerned inside single-celled tables of the appropriate fixed width & height dimensions. If you want, you can pre-fill the area past the actual formfield with underlined tabs that will simply get pushed out of the way for on-line fill-in, but will provide a writing guide for the hand-written completion.

FWIW, PDFs can have fill-in fields, but you need Acrobat Professional to create them.

HairyBuddah

Auugggghhhh! Tables. I never thought of tables. I was driving myself nuts creating forms in pairs, one for PC fill in, one for paper fill in.

Thank you VERY much.

Hmmmm, can I set up the table cell so that it gives me a nice looking space, but if my user is long winded can the cell be set up to expand as the user types more? I will experiment, but if you know the settings . . .

I have tried Acrobat Pro for forms, and found that my users could not save completed forms. So you couldn't save a filled in form for your records, or to save a partially completed form.

Hairy

macropod

Hi Hairy,

You can set the cell's row height to 'exactly' or 'at least'. The latter allows the row height to expand, but this is liable to give unintended expansions if you're using the underlined tabstops to create the handwriting lines. Also, the 'at least' setting won't help those who are filling in the form by hand ...

HairyBuddah

Glorious! Simply glorious!

That does EXACTLY what I want it to. Thank you!



Hairy