Lessons

Lesson Info

Forms and Buttons

In this case, I don't want to have checked boxes here because I have a group of items that I only want to have one choice of for being able to be done. So I am not going to use a check box here I am going to use radio buttons, but here's the interesting thing if I go in and use the check box here when they go in with these general options here, you can go through and said all these items and just getting normal check out of it, and I don't want to do that. Use my radio button here because I want one or the other or the other. There is my radio button, and you'll notice that the info panel is slightly different. Okay, so I get a much bigger properties window here. You could ignore this if you want to, because we can do this other ways, but it does tell you warning one button in the group at least two buttons or needed. Well, if you're going to have radio buttons, you have to it's a choice of either or okay, if you just want to select one, just do it as a check box, so choice number one ...

right here is this button, so I am going to name this. My actual field here which is going to be mr and group number four group number four is the group that this is all in so I'm going to go ahead and I'm going to put in I don't know sale you tae shin okay that's what it is so you need another button to make this I could use the add another button feature which then just allows me to go ahead and click on this whole thing and do that and so here's my other choice which is going to be mrs right there and it's under the same group as well so I can keep doing this by adding another button I'm just going to go into the all properties here and do it this way so let me get rid of this button so there's my first latin and I'm not going to use the little yellow window you can but this just works well faster so for this one the tool temp is going to be this the appearance is going tio in this case I'm gonna have no color and no phil because I already have the boxes built in my file the font size is going to be automatic because they're all going to be the same size the options are going to be what I'm just going to do say a checkbox aaron excellence is to a check box and the button choice for this is going to be mr because when we export the data here I need to know which checkbox they choose so there it is so there is that right there in this case copying this is exactly what you want to do because you want identical buttons, so I'm going to use my copy I confuse copy and paste I'm just going to use my option key to click and drag and hold my shift key so it constrains it right there I'm an option click and drag down the entire list right here so now I have all the same buttons in the group but I still need to make sure I go with and set each individual button so it has got its own export value so that each one is correct. So in this case this is going to be my missus button right here and therefore my options when I check this when somebody checks this this will output this amount or this value right here so very important so I don't have to close out of this. I could just go back and double click on this one and I can go through and set these values here into the general here make sure the tool tip reads the net and then we've got this as well and the options right there there we go so all the same one this is all part of the same group right here and there they all are because they're all named sal mutation that can hover over them as long as they're on the same group, they're going to act as one or the other or the other. Now, over here on the right hand side, you can also see that they're part of the same group as well here's our fields. And this is the order that everything was created in so here's my salutation field and working much like layers, I have my group here and aiken rename this group and rename that group and where they are. And then here is all my radio buttons in the exact order that I see. So I know that this is a group of radio buttons. It's not check boxes, checked boxes wouldn't be in a group, so to see how this works, I'm gonna go to preview here and there's that or that or that or that I can't choose all four, but here's the thing if I go and I test this file once I check that I can't un check it. So here I am, somebody gets a form of have tested it. I've got this whole thing and it's like, how do you uncheck a check boxes you texted to make sure that it checks, but that you didn't really want checked, so if you go back here go under the other tasks and if you choose clear the form, it takes that value out of there so that your radio buttons are not pre checked as you check them to see if they check. Check. So that's, what a radio button does. You have it in a group. Each one has to have its own tool tip and its own export data so that you get the right value because here's just for radio buttons. And I wouldn't know when I click on this. What one is going to export on any one of these, you know, so I need to have that value exporting from that as well. Again, I could use my same radio button things here it's a select one. So with the seven that I have here and we create one radio button and do what I did hear, duplicate them on all of these and make sure that the export value is what the relevant information is right there. Same thing here. Yes. Or now create a set of radio buttons. There you go. Now we may have to go in and choose multiple items here. You know, if you are mixed race or something and you have you want to check a couple of them well, that's when we just go in and we use a check box it looks exactly the same it works exactly the same. The only thing is is that when we export this we have an export value of like yes or no so that either they are they aren't well you can put any export value you hear two you know for this if we have multiple ones you know you could do caucasian black asian, native american whatever it may be because maybe we select more than one and if you have seven options here and there's like three of the options three of the options would be yes and the four options would be no so you could have that value right there and we could do that and we could put the checkbox name here and we name it what it is next to the value here so that our u caucasian and the export here is either yes or no okay so that's with using a check box there when we use radio buttons we named the entire group and so that group has one name so it falls under one heading and in that group we need to know what the values are off which radio button they check but in this each check is a separate check box and therefore that check box like this former field here this text field I need to have this named what it is that I'm next on the export is it checked or not checked yes or no or whatever you want to dio on off checked, not checked crispy or not crispy. So that's, when we'd go in and use a check box with that s oh, there is my check box. Then I come down to, like, a drop down list of items here, and I may go in and have a drop down list. Oh, state of birth there we go. I need to go in and I need to put the states in here because I don't want somebody to enter in, you know, belgium. So what I'm gonna do is I'm not going to use my little scroll window when he was my drop down window right here. They put this in and I go right to my drop down here, so I'm going to name this again. I cannot spell all properties right there put in my tool hand. I'm just gonna copy this and pasted in there and there is my options so here's, where I go in so my appearance here, I do not want told point my options here. No, I don't know, you know, I do want it filled with white, so when it drops down here, I don't see anything underneath there and here's where when I do the drop down menu, my options changed completely this is tedious no way around it I wish their a way we could go in and just take a word document with all the states just dump it right in here this is a one by one kind of thing yes like grains of sand with a tweezer one by one by one so this is how it works so we type in the state up here and we click add and then we type in another state and we click add and we spell them all wrong and then we click add and then we shorten the names and then we click add and then we go in and spell it wrong again and click add you get the point right the way we put these in here is the way that these items are going to appear we want to sort the items they're going to do it alphabetically just click on the sort items right there why don't they say sort items alphabetically? I don't know but that's what it is we can also go through here and of the sort items are off we can use the very archaic up and down we click on that item choose the upper down buttons here and walk our way through the entire thing right there so this is our list of items right here and that's great but now when I click on my when I opened up my forms field here I'm going to see the first state right in their arizona well, what happens if somebody doesn't pay attention to that? So I don't wanna have this in here, so I'm gonna click close we're going to preview there's arizona I don't want anything in there, but there is my drop down menu I've got a white background so it shows a white fail so that I don't see anything to the back of it, but I don't want any state to be chosen here I want to have a blank value right here, so I'm gonna go back in here and I'm gonna double click on this is a property here and all I have to do is make sure that I have nothing selected in my item list, which by the way, is impossible because I can't until ect something I have selected so here's the way you have to go in and create a blank a portion of the list go in and just type the space bar as an item just so I have nothing okay and I click add, and now that becomes my selected item, the selected item here is what's going to show in that particular window, so because I don't have the ability to go in and not select something, I have to create something that basically appears as nothing which in this case I add a space as an item and I put that on the list select abbott and I now have that is my value that's on the top obviously and now when I click clothes and I preview this whole thing there it is and you know, it's what I do the drop down menu space is an option but nobody would ever think I'm just going to leave it is a space and screw up their data export and it'll just come in as a space because maybe some people were born in space that's later so now I can use my drop down menu and simply click on what I want so if for some reason I mean it's going to show you this horrible scroll window here basically the same thing when I do the scroll right here and I do my options same one here so where was I born? New york, chicago l a or seattle there's only four options that you have to be born with right there so when I use the scroll box here I have the scroll box want to click on this then all I have is these horrible little scroll little nubby buttons there I don't think it's that great I'd much rather have a drop down menu it's so much more familiar with what we're doing so this is the scroll box no like it no elected at all so going back to this drop down menu I can go in with all these options, and I can put in these right here, but it can also allow users to put in text that isn't there so say somebody was born in puerto rico and I didn't include puerto rico in the list, and I want them to be able to fill that in. I can click on the allow users to create custom text, so if they don't have the item on the list, this by allowing allow us to create custom text does that so that if somebody were to go in and type in something else, that's not on the list that will become entered in that field right there. So now when I have that, it doesn't added to the list there, but that just gives me the freedom to go ahead and put that in there so that I have that ability to use that have a question here in yeah, I know you had said that you couldn't that you can't import a list that's already had done, but if you've already done a form that say, has each state could you copy and paste? Absolutely so, then it would actually have all of it there for you? Sure, I can copy this informed field from this speedy after another pdf without any issue, okay, greg definitely works out great. So in this way where we can go in and we can actually use this feature where it allows you to enter custom tax that's really nice another thing sometimes we get into places where we don't have a whole bunch of space to go in and put in information so if I were going to go in and, you know, have some type of description or something, you know what names that you use in the past and you've been married twenty six times and got lots of names and I only give you a text field it's about that size to enter in a certain amount of value there I want to be able to go in and get all that information there, but I don't want to create a huge portion of my form for you to enter in multiple lines a copy here so what I can do is I can set up the appearance or the options here that allows multi line copy and allow us to scroll through with long text so if I were to go in here and after I set that up and I were to go ahead and put in some type of dissertation where we had tons and tons and tons and tons of information here I actually have a whole bunch of information here that I can then scroll through it allows me to enter in as much information as I want the person who's putting it into conscripting through it all. But when they export the data, I'll be able to see all this is a very large block of copy. So there are some places and inevitably on forms, and I know on the back of any washington state title in a car there, like name, address everything else, and they leave you about three rooms for letters and it's, like city, state, zip and there's like an inch long of space. Well, if you're doing this on a pdf, I don't want to give you all that foreign field space, but I don't want you to feel limited in order to put all the copy in. So that comes down to using just a normal text field. But by setting multi line, which allows me to do that multi line, I can fill it in, but I won't be able to see it all. Scroll long text I can then go in and actually scroll through the long text. Turn off that scroll long text there and a preview this I get this big plus right here telling me I can't see all the copy that tends to freak people out there just like you sit there. It's overflow. Oh, my gosh, how do I get to it? Where do I see? Well, I can't really get to that they're without putting those little scroll bars on there. So when I do that, I want to make sure I do that I have the ability to scroll long text those little scroll buttons that I can put on there so far, so good. Wonderful. So that's, our basic stuff right there. You're going to use text fields, check boxes, radio buttons drop down menu who's right there. Buttons right here. Buttons are great. If I want to go in at the bottom of this and do anything like this, I'm gonna do my button and I'm going to do a print button right here and there it is, a tool tip as well. The appearance that's how it's gonna look options so under options again, really archaic in her face right here. What I want to do with the options. Well, if I want to do just a label on lee here, then the label of this is going to be called print and I chose the font size here, which is going to be eighteen right there and that's my button label only and when I click on it, it does something really cool. It inverts the colors when I click on it to make it look like it's interactive button well, who? Okay, I can have it to nothing. I could have it to an outline. Okay, so when they closed the file on a quick preview there, click print and it's like, wow, it inverts but it doesn't do anything you're right because we didn't associate in action with it. So there's my print button, I can make it look that way. If you want to get more interesting, you can actually create your own button icons. So when we go back into our button properties under options, we have our layout by default is just the label label did you type in so we can have label icon on lee? And if we do an icon on ly we can choose an icon, which is something we created an illustrator or a pdf as well, and so I could go on here find my little fishy and there it is there's my button right there. I've got my fish as my button and there is my icon for my print right there, but you know, it doesn't say print, so aiken, I'm not going to do and I can only but I'm going to d'oh icon in the top label on the bottom no I'm gonna put the label on the top actually put the icon on the left and the print on the right okay there we go there we go icon of the left print on the right what options? You know this is great because this is like really freaky here all wait a second there's an advanced button this didn't make sense click on the advanced button oh wow always scale this make sure that it's scaled proportionately here and where do I want the icon to be closer to the edge closer there wow oh much better last but not least now that we cleared that hurdle and made this aesthetically pleasing now I have to been applying action to this so I can press this button until the bacon comes home but what am I going to do with this button? I needed to do something which is why we haven't action associated with a button buttons don't do anything until we tell them to so I'm going to go under the actions tab and I'm going to select a trigger mouse up mouse down now center in this case mouse down our mouths up whatever we want so let me say on mouse up I'm going to do what and in this case I've got a quick little menu items here we set a form everything else but I don't see print here and this is what's always perplexed me we've got a drop down menu of all these things and then we've got this other menu that says executed menu item which then when I do this well, what menu item on my going to execute it doesn't come up until I hit the ad button and once they hit the ad button all of a sudden it comes up with a list of all the menu items that aiken d'oh okay, why couldn't you seen that before? All right, so I added that to the list and now what I want to do is I want to go under file and I want to choose print because I chose this is the print click ok, I add that to their so now on mouse up execute the menu item a file print so let's go into the preview here click on this see how it works and we don't have a printer installed but of course if you did it both print dialog box and we'll be ready to go great. What happens if we want to make this into a different type of button? I could go in and I can edit the actions of this button or the options here I'm going to want tio choose clear form here and I want to make this so that when you press this button it clears all the data out of the form and this could be for you if you're sending this out there's data in the forum that you want to get done or somebody messes up and they realized they didn't do it right. So I'm gonna go to my action here if I haven't action set up, I can click on the action here and delete it and then go back under here and choose from the items here and in this case, I mean it reset the form, add that to it, and it will ask me what field? So I want to reset. Well, this is kind of cool. I can pick and choose what sections I want to reset their certain form fields that I may have filled in already for you as you go. So when I choose the reset form field, there may be ones that I don't want you to reset, so I can choose in this case, I want them all close that, and I've got information set up in all of these sorts clicking the preview, and I can see that I got all this information in here, and if I go down to the clear foreign button and click on that, did it work one of the bats, it worked all right there, it didn't clear this. Only because this is part of the drop down menu here, and it does not going to take them out of the list right there. But this one since we had this is the default here. It cleared that all of my text that I had entered up there was cleared as well. So it did reset the form back to the default state that it was in and so that's, what a button! Khun dio we're going to get into buttons a lot tomorrow when we get into acrobat, we're going to show you how to do buttons because we're gonna have rollovers and a whole bunch of other great stuff keeping in mind here. Little caveat for tomorrow, I can add multiple functions to a single button, multiple actions so we can do things like this and this is always fun. I can go in and I can reset the form and then I can go in just for fun. I could go in and I can execute a menu item I click add and I go under file close, so once for somebody clears the form, it automatically closes out of it. They're just like what just happened, I click on this and it crashes. No, you can do that I can also have it play a sound as well I can have it play a movie things like that so if you want to click a button and have it do something we can do that anything that you can find from the list right here you know maybe I want to go in after a print clear the forum I'm going to do file safe has so now when I do that resets the form and then does file save as and while it's saving I can also go in and I could have it play a little tune for me you know and I can pick that as well and it does that there it is resets the forum seems to file and plays a little too involved doing it buttons while they're not great visually here an acrobat we could do a lot of great things and then design if you can create anything and then design you can turn into a button so we got the full long graphics realm of doing this here got us like cheese factor here so are we doing in questions there? We have a number of questions coming in from chat and twitter one question from you there is will the buttons print when you print the form? Absolutely so you'll see it exactly like this if we were in preview mode here that's what you're going to see ok you could do it so that after you press that button it disappears because we showed you how to hide field so you won't get that so if you were to hit the print button that would disappear and then it would print so that's one way you could make it not show up okay okay alright peerless digital says can I create a city drop down list based upon the state dropped down choices um if you could that would have to be a job a script based thing and I don't know because they're two different things I don't have any way an acrobat to go in here and say if something happens here then go ahead and be able to go to another thing here um if I were to go through here and yeah, I don't I don't know if you can I don't think you could so that's yeah that's exactly I think what cook esquire was asking is it possible to make something required? Only if something else you know I would check on planet pdf dot com plan to see if that's not possible planet pdf is for those really obscure things that are out there that you wanted to d'oh that you're trying to figure out that you're trying to make happen and in fact one of the cool things that planet pdf did for me many years ago I had filled out this form and I had tio work with this form to get ah, date that every time somebody opened the file, it would go in. And it would create a date that when they open the file and this is what's actually in here. So I just threw it in here is well, so if I go under my forms here and they get it, the forms right there, this is a foreign field that has a particular script in it. And what I actually have here is I have a script. Um, let's. See, where is my custom? Violent. So that was that. But there is. I don't have to make sure I copied this correctly because I was able to go in and run a validation script here that put this in here. So actions running java script. There it is. So edit this. There we go. So when I did this particular field here, I put this in here and I ran a java script and the java script basically said, ok, every time this you get to this field, it's going to read your date on your computer there and put that in. So when I did that and I were period preview this, it would go in, and when I saved this file, it would give me today's date, and what we did is this was on a legal document so that we want to know if people actually opened it and made changes because we made changes and didn't save it. It wouldn't change that date, but if it is the second you hit, save it, read the clock on your computer and the date, and it went ahead and saved it, which was awesome. So if I go in and I do this now to today's date and try that and go through there, it is there's today's date right in there. So that's one of the ways you can write a java script, so I would see if you can do it where you can have one drop down menu activates something else because we do have that capability of going in here and creating actions and options here, and the actions is run a java script. So when somebody doesn't drop down menu, if I just don't know how we can get to the options values here, too, it had something to it without saying absolutely, no, I'd say check there. Because I know nothing about java script I can copy and paste javascript in I don't understand it but I know that it works just showed you there he's anything you're next questions from jerry yeah have you seen any examples I see in the button properties that one of the options of course you just showed us is tio is to go ahead and run a java script and the other is to submit a form have you seen the examples where it would launch your email program? So for instance, in the for my example it would be like a model release it would open up the ability to then email that to the photographer oh, absolutely when we go in and submit a form which is the one thing that we have not done submitting a form automatically does that. And so if we go in and we choose submit a form and we're going to do this tomorrow but if we go in and submit a form here all of a sudden this is where you can go in and enter your link, which is your link to your email address and how you want the whole thing done absolutely and that's when you actually get to this submit a form so once we feel this whole thing out, well, go ahead and do that very cool, thanks yes, ok and md freed freeman wants no are there places that you can go to get ready made drop down list to use for things like states countries, any place that you go on any you know I feel that you want to or any web site that you want to and they have this drop down menus, but you could probably just go online and say, you know, list of fifty states copy and do it. The problem is is that you can't go in and paste them in you got to do with value by value, there is no pace multiple, there is no import, there is nothing like that. It is literally a when you go into here and you enter in your values into this drop down menu, it is a item at a time knows how it says item it, not items and when you click add you don't get anything, do you put it there? They're a couple of questions about that. Yeah, I think people are trying to find a way to work around that way, but until it says items and add multiple is there, there is no import it's you put something in here, you click add, well, I wonder if someone had already created a pdf doc, and when you were just copying that entire field we're trying it would already have everything once you put that all in there, all those options are associated with it. You're good to go, but if you've got to take the list and do it yourself and you have to enter it in one at a time, sounds like he may have done that before, just twice once for the first ten years of teaching, and then second for the seven years of teaching just twice, jason, we have about ten minutes left, we have a lot more questions, but I wasn't sure if you had more to get to. I do have some more to get to, so I want to show you some of this that's really nice, and we're going to kind of leave it there. One of the things that I want to show you here is going in and creating multiple files inside something like this, where we had our exercise tracker up, and here is a perfect example of going in and taking just a very basic form here and duplicating the fields very quickly. Now. I showed you the whole copy and paste, so if I go into my form fields here and I had it, the whole thing and I go in and I'm going to create a text field here, and I said, all of my properties and this is going to be the type of activity and I'm actually going to do this one again don't pay attention to my typing this is why I don't do coding because the first three letters of coding had failed you know I could never do anything some of the type of activity here and make sure that I've got everything set the way I wanted to be options or good general there we go tool hint okay, great so there is my type of activity that I'm dealing with and then over here I'm just going to go in I'm gonna copy this over here stretch this out and this is just going to become comments and with this I want to be able to allow multi line and scrolled there we go and I'm gonna close out of this now again if I were to go through here and option click and drag I would get the exact same thing time and time again and I still have to balance all my spacing in between I'd have to make sure everything lines up but I'm not going to do that what I'm gonna do is I'm going to select my items right here I'm going to right click on these items and I'm going to use what they call place multiple fields place multiple fields here is if you have something exactly like this page we're going to have a time and time and time again but every value has to be different I'm in a place multiple fields and it comes up again with a dialog box like this how many fields do you want down click on how many went down and then we've got this great little I call this the atari joystick one or it's like where you want to go up down and this is just you know this moves it up or down so I go in and I can go ahead and move everything up or down but you noticed that just moves it up or down the page here I want to actually go in and take these and put more space in between here now here we go there it is in the height is the height overall so when I do the height here that's going in and that's putting more space between everything as well so I have to kind of very carefully go in here and see that I get that spacing just where he wanted to be just perfect so I may need to go in here and do just a little bit of tweaking here with that see how that looks okay you know for three now does that look good that's too much for four for three five you can see how tedious this is, okay, but once I do this and I set these all up and I can do as many as I want and they click ok the great part of this is is that it knows that it's not going to give the exact duplicates here you see here how in the comments it gives me comments dot zero comments not one comments dot two comments dot three same thing over here zero one two three so it goes in and it renames them but it places all these files very nicely on here so this allows me to copy files or fields very quickly place them very quickly and because it's kind of an archaic way of moving things up and down and adjusting the height overall what I do is this I go in and they select I select my bond in the last one here I put that exactly where I wanted to be select all of them just click and drag over and as long as the top in the bottom one or in the position it doesn't matter where all the rest of these are that I right click on I'm going to distribute everything vertically and puts them all and they're just like it should so sometimes I don't spend much time on creating multiple fields by going in there and using the overall spacing height and everything I just put him in there and if things are all over the place then things were all over the place like that so I'm just going to do this here real quick or I'll get rid of all these right, click on here, place multiple fields, and I know that I need, you know, saying twenty of these, and so there it is, and there's, twenty of them. And, yes, I know that it doesn't go all the way down. How many do I have to have if I put this one down here? And then I choose all of these as well, they put that there and use my vertically distribute. It just separates them all out for me, and that becomes a lot easier if, of course, you count correctly, which is just kind of guessed. It was twenty, but I think we're like one shorter one long here, but that's, how you can do it. Plus, every time you look at this now, this is it gives you different, actual names, are those values.