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Old 03-20-2017, 04:26 PM
Ferret Ferret is offline Word 2010 - ActiveX Form Fields not working After exporting as PDF Windows 7 64bit Word 2010 - ActiveX Form Fields not working After exporting as PDF Office v. X
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Default Word 2010 - ActiveX Form Fields not working After exporting as PDF

So I have a file I've been tasked with creating by a new Boss whose taken over my company.



He uses this thing called Tigerpaw and he wants me to create a new service form, as a PDF, that he can then use on Tigerpaw... catch is I do not know much about PDF's.

We have Office 2010 at our office, and I used Word 2010.

I created a few Tables, to define where the text and where the form fields will go.

I then used the Developer Tools on Word, to select and create a Form Field from the ActiveX Controls... so when the document is pulled up you can type information into the form field, and then print the page, and you're done.

The page is perfect, and it works fine, as a Word DOCX.

But after converting it to PDF...

I lose the use of the form fields...

Now here's the catch.

I have the file with me here at home, but I do not have my own copy of MS Office.

I only have OpenOffice 4.1.1 and LibreOffice 5.3

OpenOffice will not open the document properly, but LibreOffice will...

I'm not asking for "support" on those Suites.


I am just wondering if there is something I can do that will convert this file to a PDF and keep the ActiveX form fields working properly.
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Old 03-20-2017, 04:48 PM
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macropod macropod is offline Word 2010 - ActiveX Form Fields not working After exporting as PDF Windows 7 64bit Word 2010 - ActiveX Form Fields not working After exporting as PDF Office 2010 32bit
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Word's ActiveX controls do not convert to PDF formfields. You would need to recreate the formfields in the PDF post-conversion. Do note that any macros you might have attached to the ActiveX controls in Word would also need to be re-written from scratch for the PDF, as the code for both would mostly differ.

As for OpenOffice & LibreOffice, neither of those programs nor their file formats provides 100% compatibility with Word.
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Old 03-21-2017, 10:04 AM
Ferret Ferret is offline Word 2010 - ActiveX Form Fields not working After exporting as PDF Windows 7 64bit Word 2010 - ActiveX Form Fields not working After exporting as PDF Office v. X
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Thanks for the response!

After a little Google research, I discovered that LibreOffice's Writer does exactly what I wanted with its text formfields.

I just deleted the ones I made in MS Word, then opened the document file again in Writer and recreated the formfields with a couple simple actions, and clicked "export as PDF" and done!

Wish MS Word allowed us to do it as easy, would have made things a lot simpler for me, but oh well. Jobs done now, and the boss is pleased with the result!
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Old 03-21-2017, 07:02 PM
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macropod macropod is offline Word 2010 - ActiveX Form Fields not working After exporting as PDF Windows 7 64bit Word 2010 - ActiveX Form Fields not working After exporting as PDF Office 2010 32bit
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Ferret View Post
Wish MS Word allowed us to do it as easy
Microsoft would most likely be happy to oblige, but my understanding is that Adobe sees itself as being in competition with Microsoft and has a history of trying to block Microsoft's efforts to provide interoperability with Adobe's products whilst allowing others to do so.
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