Creating a form from the content of a Microsoft Excel spreadsheet

This feature is available only in the stand-alone version of Designer.

You can use a Microsoft Excel spreadsheet as the basis to create a new PDF form, which you can distribute to recipients by email to collect the same type of data as in the spreadsheet.

Using the New Form Assistant, you can create a PDF form with interactive text fields based on the column headers in the Excel spreadsheet. The New Form Assistant creates one text field object for each column in the spreadsheet. Text field objects are positioned in the form from left to right and wrapped onto additional lines if needed. The caption and binding name of each text field object corresponds to the column header text in the spreadsheet.

If you include an email submit button object in the form, you can distribute the form to recipients to fill and return. When you select the Distribute Form command from the File menu, the form closes in Designer and the Acrobat Distribute wizard appears to guide you through the distribution process. As you receive the filled forms from the recipients, you can organize the collected data into data sets in Acrobat. After you receive multiple sets of form data, you can reorganize the form data into a spreadsheet.

Keep in mind that Designer does not maintain any calculations, scripts, images, and embedded objects such as graphs that are in the spreadsheet document.

  1. In Excel, open the spreadsheet you want to use to create a new PDF form.

  2. In Designer, select File > New.

  3. Select Based on a Spreadsheet, and click Next.

  4. Follow the on-screen instructions in the New Form Assistant. You must leave Excel running to complete the process in the New Form Assistant.

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