When built-in support isn’t enough
My fifth reunion at Stanford is this fall. For every reunion, Stanford puts together a “class book” consisting of one page for every person in the class who wants to send one in. The page includes things like current contact information, a picture, favorite Stanford memories, and a large section for what you’ve been up to since graduation. I read through Adrienne’s copy from her reunion last fall and it was really interesting to see what everyone had been up to.
The deadline for getting the page submitted is Wednesday and I’ve been somewhat busy lately, so I find myself spending my Sunday afternoon trying to put it together. The alumni association is nice enough to provide a PDF file with form fields for the standard info, I figured I could just fill out the fields, print to PDF with Mac OS X’s built-in Print to PDF support, open the result in Graphic Converter or something like that to put pictures in, and then mail off the result or just take it to the alumni folks on campus.
Preview doesn’t support PDF forms, so I had to go download Adobe Reader 7. That didn’t work at all with some of the form fields, so I gave up and found a copy of Adobe Reader 6.1. That worked with all of the fields, so I spent a little while filling them out exactly as I wanted them and went to print. But no…that’d be too easy. Adobe Reader actually disables the standard Print to PDF button, so you can’t print to PDF within it. It disables print previews, too, so I can’t preview the document in Preview, then print to PDF from there. So there’s basically no way for me to get any output at all out of Adobe Reader other than printing to paper, which I can’t do because I don’t have a printer at home (and which wouldn’t help anyway because I’m not done with the document). So I’m stuck, all because Adobe decided to turn off built-in features of the operating system. Removing standard features is really not a good way to convince me to use any of your software….
Meanwhile, I’m still looking for a solution. I don’t know what I’ll do at this point. I’m certainly not paying $299 for a copy of Acrobat Standard just so I can complete one form.
Update: Adrienne put everything together for me, including the graphic, and in probably a tenth of the time it would’ve taken me. Thanks, Adrienne!
Brooks Moses Said,
March 20, 2005 @ 3:54 pm
Come help us move some boxes Tuesday night, borrow my computer which has Acrobat Standard on it?
(Actually, you’d be free to borrow my computer regardless of whether you helped move boxes, but we’ll be moving some then. And, for that matter, you could just email me the text and the form; it should be a pretty quick matter to assemble it.)
Steven Canfield Said,
March 20, 2005 @ 4:26 pm
I would suggest that if the form isn’t too complex you just answer the questions on another document, say in Word or Pages, and then output to PDF.
Eric Said,
March 20, 2005 @ 5:15 pm
The fields are simple, but I can’t replicate the layout in another app without a lot of extra work. Thanks for the suggestion, though….
Larry Staton Jr. Said,
March 21, 2005 @ 4:57 am
In Acrobat 7, File > Print > Output Options > Save As Postscript.
Preview.app will then transform the PS file to PDF.
Muttly Said,
March 21, 2005 @ 11:08 am
Do you have Adobe Illustrator? (aka: the best canopener in the postscript world).
If not, you can get a 30-day demo to see just how great it is for this task (and you can use it to slap in your other graphics, to boot!)
PS–you might want to check if there are access permissions set on the form… (Acrobat Reader 7 allows you to print to PDF; not sure if this is a feature that was added, or a permission of the form that I looked at)
PPS–AI is a great canopener, but doesn’t do much for you with the form. You’re on your own for filling it out.
David Steinbrunner Said,
March 26, 2005 @ 10:02 am
I once had a form to fill out that took me days of working on it on and off and having to keep it up without being able to save it was a pain in the neck. I wanted to be able to make back ups of the form just in case without having to actually print it but as Eric points out Acrobat/Adobe Reader disables the “Save as PDF” button.
After seeing Larry’s comment on the “Output Options” route I tried it out with Adobe Reader 7 and had no problems saving to PDF. No need to even use the Postscript option unless you would rather have that than PDF.
Thanks to Eric for bring this up and to Larry for pointing us in the right direction to still be able to use the ‘built-in support’.
David Steinbrunner Said,
March 26, 2005 @ 10:08 am
More on the subject from Mac OS X Hints:
Save completed Acrobat Reader fill-in forms
http://www.macosxhints.com/article.php?story=20040416005836764&query=save+as+PDF+reader
Nick Said,
April 5, 2005 @ 5:06 pm
I went through similar troubles, and I have Acrobat Pro - the form is poorly designed, among other things.
What’s most irksome is, after all the pain, now they go and put up an online form that we could fill out instead. Grr.
–Nick
Jan Said,
June 7, 2005 @ 9:53 am
I know I’m like, so, 19th century and shit, but I printed the bad boy out and taped my photos to it.