PDF documents on a website.....

My client uses PDF documents to represent forms on their website. They have created more forms in Microsoft Word and would like them converted to PDF for their website.

How do I do this? Is there specific software that lets me convert a word document to PDF?

They also mentioned propper TAB-bing is necessary. By that, they ment that when someone is filling out the form (in Acrobat), they can press "TAB" and move to the next consecutive field. I just want to make it known that this needs to be controlled...


Can anyone point me in the right direction?

Sorry if I posted this in the wrong thread, but I couldn't find anything more appropriate...

Thanks,

-Costas-

I don't believe that pdf forms will work on a web page unless the viewer has acrobat installed. The free reader that most people have wont let you edit/type into the pages.
As far as converting word to pdf there are many convertors around just do a search at download.com or somewhere.

luck,
robert

If it is forms that they would print out to fill out pdf's are fine. As for Word it is biult in to convert to pdf. There is a button in the tool bar ans an acrobat menu. Also put a link on the page so people can download the reader.

to view PDFs you must have Adobe Reader installed.
to convert Word docs to PDF you must have Adobe Acrobat which will give you the otion in Word to print to a PDF.


wrong. the reader will let you read the PDF. if when you create the PDF you set it up as a form and insert fields, the viewers will allow you type into these fields.

when you insert the fields you can set up a "tab order" as well as make comments in other fields - read-only that you can set to be not visible when printing to let them know that they can use tab to advance along your tab order

as suckafree said this is fine if they are then going to print it out but you cannot save the information to the pdf or get the data they enter into it back from them electronically unless they also have Adobe Acrobat (a $500 version that most ppl dont have)

so....if you want them to download the form...type the info in and print it out then this is your answer. it gives you a chance to get a nice looking form that you can actually read the contents of because they type it directly into the form. however once they close the document or click the back button or something....all the data is gone

hope this helps

good lucky and rock on!!

Hi there,

I use both pdf-files and word files on the website for work cus we have a lot of standard paperwork. You can only make pdf-files with the pdf-writer and if I'm not wrong at this one, you can make forms on pdf but the client also needs a pdf-writer to fill in the form and send it back. Offcourse it can allways be printed out and filled in by hand.
I usually make forms in word and secure them so nothing can be changed on the layout, you can even build in (a minimum) security of what data needs to be filled in. We find that lots of our clients find this method easier then printing out and just sending it back with mail.
P.s. when making forms in word, make sure you make them with a low version (I allways use 97 for this), not everyone has the newest software, and its not backwards compatible.

Greetz, Merel

I appreciate all the feedback, but still have some questions:

cliffhanger: you mentioned that I need to have Adobe Acrobat installed (which should give me a toolbar in Microsoft Word to export to PDF). You also mentioned that it's $500.00. Does this mean that I need to pay $500.00 to be able to have this functionality and export from Word to PDF?

I am supposed to have a proposal submitted today to my client. I need to know what my expenses are going to be for the software, and how much time it should take me.

The answer i've obtained is that it's possible to do with Adobe Acrobat (which is $500)... Is there any other software that is cheaper and let's me mess with TAB order?

Please respond ASAP,

I appreciate all the feedback.

-Costas-

take a look at ghostscript. Works great and you can't beat the price.

www.ghostscript.com