Adobe Acrobat XI - Manual (Page 226)

219
Last updated 1/14/2015
Chapter 5: Forms
Filling in PDF forms
More Help topics
PDF forms basics
Is the form fillable?
Not all forms are fillable. Sometimes form creators don’t convert their PDFs to interactive fillable forms. Or, they
intentionally design a form that you can fill in only by hand or with the Add Text tool. These non-interactive forms are
called flat forms.
A Interactive forms highlight where you should type B Forms with the Add Text Comment tool let you add text anywhere on the form
Fill in interactive forms
An interactive form contains fields that you can select or fill in.
A Purple message bar indicates presence of fillable fields. B When clicked, shows where fillable fields exist.
1 If necessary, right-click the document, and select either the Hand Tool or the Select Tool from the pop-up menu.
The pointer changes to a different icon as you move it over a field. For example, the Hand tool changes to an I-
beam when you can type text into the form field. Some text fields are dynamic, meaning that they automatically
resize to accommodate the amount of data you enter and can span across pages.
2 (Optional) To make form fields easier to identify, click the Highlight Fields button on the document message bar.
Form fields appear with a colored background (light blue by default), and all required form fields are outlined in
another color (red by default).