Making electronic PDF forms with PagePlus

Did you know that PagePlus can make interactive digital documents as well as traditional designs for printing? We know you knew that, it’s just great to sing its praises for a moment – not every desktop publisher is so well endowed with modern features!

The kind of interactive PagePlus documents we’re talking about are electronic forms (eForms), increasingly-popular eBooks, training guides with mouse interactivity, plus digital magazines and eBrochures featuring video and other multimedia. This guide is going to take a closer look at electronic PDF forms.

PagePlus forms versus online forms

Why make electronic forms with PagePlus instead of producing an online form, e.g. with WebPlus?

Well, you don’t need a website to make a PagePlus form, they’re created as PDFs so they can be emailed to people or downloaded and saved. PDF forms are easy to fill, completion can be interrupted and resumed, they are likely to be neater than their hand-written counterparts, and the answers come back to you quickly by email or via our free online form processing service. And there’s more! You don’t lose the old fashioned simplicity of printable forms – “electronic” PDF forms can still be printed, filled in by hand, and faxed or mailed back to you if the recipient prefers this method.

The simplicity and flexibility of PagePlus PDF forms means you should get a better response rate, faster, and the answers should be easier to read.

Designing a PDF form

Here are the key guidelines for a successful electronic form:

• Decide on the information (form data) you want to collect.
• Sketch out your design on some paper, keeping usability and visual appeal in mind.
• Choose a form size and structure (single or multi-page – and do you maybe need international versions?).
• Create the form’s background including shading, other graphics, text and anything else you want to include.
• Add your form fields with correct alignment and sizing.
• Test by publishing your PDF, completing the form in PDF software, and submitting the answers.

You can read full instructions in the PagePlus tutorials online, and we’ll summarise the processes here.

Setup

1. Open a new blank document of an appropriate size, e.g. no larger than A4 or Letter paper (it’s still handy to think of forms as having a paper size in case they are printed for filling in by hand).
2. On the Arrange toolbar, click  Clean Design. Especially when used with Dynamic Guides, this design mode makes it easier to keep things the same size as each other and neatly aligned when you are creating new objects or moving them round. While doing this, it also hides fixed ruler guides and margins until they are needed, so as to reduce visible clutter.

We’ll leave the graphic design choices to you. Let’s proceed with the layout of form items and other text.

Text labels

1. Click the  Standard Text Frame tool and drag out a text frame approximately 1cm (0.5″) by 15cm (6″) wide.
2. Write your first label in this frame. Labels are the text descriptors in front of form fields, e.g. Name, Address etc.
3. Format the text by applying a text style or by choosing your own font, size and colour.
4. Set the text to be right-justified and position the text frame in the left half of the page as per the example in our related online tutorial.
5. Use the Edit menu’s Replicate feature to create a neat vertical stack of text labels automatically, in a 1 x 6 grid with vertical gap of 0.3cm (0.13″).
6. Edit the text in each label so you have First Name, Last Name, Email Address, Age, Gender, and Receive Special Offers? or other labels you wish to use instead. Expand the last text frame as necessary.

Form fields

Now insert the text-entry areas, called form fields, for each item as required.

1. Choose Text Field from the Insert > Form Field menu flyout. Click next to your first text label to place this field on your page.
2. Drag the corners or your form field box to size it to roughly 0.8cm (0.3″) high and 7cm (2.75″) wide. Note the W and H dimensions from the Transform tab so you can apply the same values to your other text fields for neatness, or size them with your mouse and use dynamic guides to keep sizing consistent.
3. Double-click the form field to edit its properties. Give it a unique name such as First_Name and add a ToolTip, e.g. Type your first name here. You can look at the other tabs in this dialog to change the appearance of the field, whether it is spell-checked automatically and lots more, or you can just click OK.
4. Repeat steps 1-3 in this section to add additional fields for the Last Name and Email Address form entries.

You have now achieved a basic form, and can publish using just these text fields.

Rather than continue with more design instructions in this article, we encourage you to visit the related PagePlus tutorial on our support site to learn how to create other types of form objects. However you choose to develop your form further, you’ll still need to test the form so you’ll still need to add a Submit button. And finally, you’ll also need to publish as PDF to get the form online or sent to recipients – so we’ll round off this article with those instructions so you can configure and test online form processing.

Finalising your form

Choosing a form submission method

You can have the form processed electronically in two ways. They are via Serif Web Resources, our free online service, or via another online service of your own choosing.

1. Select Insert > Form Field > Button > Submit Button. The Form Submit Wizard opens.
2. Click Next, then The data should be submitted via Serif Web Resources, then Next again.
3. Click Get a Form ID. Check the Terms & Conditions box and proceed to complete the online form on serif.com to get a unique form ID for online data processing, and to specify an email address to receive data at.
4. Copy and Paste the Form ID into the Form Submit Wizard in PagePlus.
5. Leave the data format as HTML and click Next, then Finish.
6. Click on your page to place the Submit button, then move it to a position below your other form fields.

Publish your PDF form

1. On the Standard toolbar, click  Publish as PDF.
2. In the General tab, in the Compatibility drop-down list, select an Acrobat compatibility level. If you believe your form-fillers will be using machines that have been online and updated themselves sometime in the past couple of years, it’s safe to choose the highest version number.
3. Select the Preview PDF File check box, and then click OK.
4. In the Publish to PDF dialog, type a file name for the PDF, and Save it in a convenient location.

You can now preview your PDF, test the form filling, and test our free data processing by clicking Submit. Your answers will be sent by email to the address you specified earlier.

The full tutorial is worth continuing with to learn about a wider range of form features. Other form objects include radio buttons so users can select from a multiple choice like an age bracket, a drop-down list, check boxes e.g. for approving permissions, and digital signatures. You can also validate some form field entries so that a specific number format is provided, or you can add button actions like reset, open a web page, go to a different form page and lots more.

Let us know if you’ve made PDF forms with PagePlus in the comments section below, and share this page to let others know about this handy publishing feature.

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