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- Create a Form
A tutorial in 3 steps - Create a PDF
from any document - Create Form Fields
using Adobe Acrobat - Conduct a Survey
The do's and dont's...
how to create Business Forms
Creating a professional business form is a handicraft. Apart from esthetical and pedagogical issues, there is the international business forms standard to follow, which govern the size of the check box, icicle height, grass mark distance etc.
This widespread set of rules rest upon 40 years of user testing and have been refined by both graphical artists and educationalists throughout the years. Even the vertical distance between form fields is regulated, as any of these standard forms can be filled-out using any standard typewriter.
No worries though, as the aim of this tutorial is to guide you through the technical aspects of the international form standard.
Tools for Forms Design
submittable or printable?
Business forms can be created in virtually any layout application, but before choosing your tool you should consider what eventually will happen to your form. Is it to be printed? Published on a web site? Both? Should it be able to return the entered information (capture data, i e submit capabilities)? As for web (HTML) forms, you probably want to use an application such as Adobe Golive or Macromedia Dreamweaver. As for PDF forms, you can use any layout tool since Adobe Acrobat can print your form to a PDF file. If you're creating Word forms, one might believe that Microsoft Word is suitable for the task. Although this may be true if you have a master's degree in MS Office, we discourage you from going down that road as there are better solutions.
This tutorial is about creating forms, but we strongly recommend a free application whose focus lies entirely on creating business forms: TextCenter's Fill-In Design Express. Fill-In Design Express automatically follows the business forms standard mentioned earlier (meaning your forms will resemble offical forms of tax boards, insurance offices, banks etc). Additionally, Design Express allows you to export your forms in both PDF and Word format.
Anyway, let's start by setting up a standard form grid and adding some form fields...