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Home » Newsletter » September 2007

By Shivaranjini M.

Gnostice Print2eDoc goes beyond just converting documents to PDF. The Preview/Designer feature of the application allows you to add numerous enhancements to your converted PDF documents. For example, you can add bookmarks, comments (note annotations), and markups (link annotations) to your PDF documents.

One interesting feature of Preview/Designer is the ability to add interactive forms (AcroForms or PDF forms). In this article, you will see how to use this feature.

You can add PDF form elements such as text fields, combo boxes, list boxes, and buttons to your generated documents. You can specify submit or JavaScript actions to buttons. A submit action will submit the form data to a URL, say that of a website, when the button is clicked. A JavaScript action will allow you to execute a JavaScript script, say to calculate the value in a field based on details entered in some other field(s).

Enabling Preview/Designer

To ensure that the Preview/Designer window always pops up when you convert a document:

1. Select Start menu.
2. Open Printers and Faxes.
3. Select Gnostice Print2eDoc and display its shortcut menu.
4. Select Printing Preferences from the shortcut menu to display the Gnostice Print2eDoc Printing Preferences dialog box.
5. Select the Document Creation tab and select Show Preview/Designer check box from the Other Options group.

Adding Forms Fields

Now that you have enabled Preview/Designer, you can begin to use it. Start by printing a document to Print2eDoc. After you specify a location and name for the output PDF file and then choose a document creation profile, the Preview/Designer window will be displayed.

Here, you will see a preview of the output document.

1. Use the navigation controls to go to the page where you want to add the form fields.
   
2. Click on the Text Field icon on the toolbar and then draw a text button on the page.
   
   
3. A Text Field Properties dialog will be displayed, where you can modify the text field's attributes. Note down the name of the field, in case the form is to be submitted to your website.
   
4. Click on the Button icon on the toolbar and then draw a button on the page.
   
5. In the Button Properties dialog that pops up, modify the new button's attributes. In the Options tab, change the action to Submit if you need to submit the form contents to a website. Here, you will have to specify the URL on the website where the form contents will be captured.
   
6. When you are finished with adding form fields, select the Apply & Continue button.

Demo

1. Open this PDF file inside your browser.
2. Fill the text field on page two and click the submit button.
3. View the text field value being captured by a web page (ASP code shown below) on our site.

Response.Write "You submitted a text field with value <b>" & _
                Request.Form("Edit1") & "</b>"

Preview/Designer is a feature available only in the Professional version of Print2eDoc. See the product's features page for more reasons to upgrade.