Creating and Editing Form Fields

You can create and edit form fields. A form field can be drawn anywhere on the PDF page. You can resize or delete a single form field or multiple form fields simultaneously. See Form Controls for the range of field types.
 

To create a form field

  1. Choose Forms > [desired tool], or select a form tool on the Form toolbar.  

  2. Drag the cursor to create a form field of the required size.

  3. The relevant form field properties dialog box appears.

  4. Select desired properties and click Close.

To define properties for form fields

When you insert a form field, the associated multi-tab properties dialog box appears. To change properties later, choose the form tool for the field type involved and double click the control.

Some settings apply to all form field types: Define a field name, a hover text and field display attributes. Make the control visible or invisible, printable or not, read-only or not and in some cases required or not. Further settings depend on the field type:

Check boxes:

Check box style, export values, default state and associated actions.

Radio Buttons:

Same as check box, but additionally the ability to set that all buttons with identical names and values form a group.

Text Fields:

Text alignment, default text to display (if any) – this must conform to the rules for chosen format:

  • No restriction (None)

  • Number (choose separator style, number of decimals, negative number display method or percentage display, and whether the field is for monetary values (if so, which currency and which punctuation for separators)

  • Date or Time (choose formats)

  • Special formats (Zip Codes with 5 or 9-digits, telephone numbers or US social security numbers)

  • Arbitrary Mask: Define your own pattern (see Searching by Patterns and Masks).

  • Custom: Define your own form field content rules.

For text fields with no restriction, you can allow a multi-line field with or without text scrolling. ‘Password’  allows the real value to be replaced with a set of asterisks.

You can set requirements for validation of field content entered by recipients, and set up rules for automatic calculation of values in selected numerical fields.

Digital signature field:

Linked actions and rules for signing.

List Box:

Define the list texts and their export values and associate actions to triggers or selection changes.

Combo Box:

As for list box, but also with the format choices available for Text fields. The list box entries must conform to limitations of the format.

 

 To resize one or more form fields

 

Select the form field(s) you want to resize.

  • To resize the fields by dragging, select the form tool that was used to create the form field, and then drag any border handle on the field. Press Shift to keep the current field’s aspect ratio.

  • To resize the fields by one pixel, press the Ctrl+Arrow key; to resize the fields by 10 pixels, press Ctrl+Shift+Arrow.

  • To resize a group of form fields to have the same width, height, or area of a particular form field, select the fields to be changed; then right-click over the field that has the dimension you want and choose Height, Width, or Both under Size in the shortcut menu.

To delete a form field

  • Right-click a field and choose Edit > Delete from the shortcut menu, or select a field and press Delete.

Click the PDF Converter button reset fields Creating and Editing Form Fields Reset Fields button to clear all form fields.
 

To specify in which order users can tab through the fields in a form

  1. Choose Forms > Set Tab Order, or click the PDF Converter button set tab order Creating and Editing Form Fields Set Tab Order button in the Form toolbar. This will sort the fields according to their creation order: a number appears in the top-left corner of each form field to signal its current position.
     

  2. To change this tab order:

    • select the Set Tab Order tool

    • double-click the field that you want to be the first

    • single-click the rest of the fields as you want them ordered.

    • click the Hand tool to stop re-ordering. If you stop before all fields are clicked, the remaining fields keep the ordering as displayed.

You can set standardized tab orders. Display Pages in the PDF Converter navigation Creating and Editing Form Fields Navigation panel, right-click a page and choose Page Properties > Tab Order.

 

Note

Do not edit form controls or run FormTyper on a form with active XFA controls.

 

 

Creating and Editing Form Fields