My customer actually stores his documents, which are single page automotive forfeits, in a single MS Word document... this method is of course generating a huge file which is slow to open, not to talk about searches.
After a user compiles a document, he may need to print it to manually sign it. Then the document is scanned back and stored in PDF format. The document may be printed again to be
signed a second time by a manager. The doubly signed document is scanned again and saved
overwriting the singly-signed one.
The user wants to be able to search the document using a couple of search keys (the doc number and a sort of a SSN). That is the reason they are using a single file, to be able to search in the file using Word's search feature.
I have to propose an IT solution. I was thinking about giving them a software tool that:
reads a pdf form/template; the template rarely changes
shows the template on the screen and allows the user to input his variable fields in the form
some of the fields must be defined as searchable
the user saves only the form fields, not the whole pdf.
the sw is able to rebuild a document by coupling the template with the fields. I have to find a way to tie the template with the saved fields, so that the template can change (versioning) without breaking the old documents
the tool allows to search in multiple documents, using the defined search fields
the tool allows to print the document to manually sign it; this is the hard part. When the document is signed cannot be changed anymore, but if the document is simply scanned and coupled with the form/fields pdf, then I'll loose the benefits of only storing the data decoupled from the template. Should I only scan the signature and attach it to the document as an image?
What do you suggest to use?
Adobe XML Forms?
Adobe Forms Data Format?
An already existing software?
Other?
For the existing documents, I want allow the customer to import his huge MS Word file into the new system.
Thanks.
Sounds like you want a PDF form template that submits data to a dB that can be searched.
OTOH, if you just save the PDFs, Acrobat Pro can generate an index file from a directory, that can be searched (from reader?). Yep, you can run searches on an index from reader, but can only build them with Acrobat.
I prefer AcroForms to LiveCycle forms myself. There's a lot more software out there that works with 'em. If you go with LiveCycle, you're almost completely locked into Adobe. And Adobe server software is EXPENSIVE.
Related
I have a Notes app that was designed for the browser, not the client. It allowed upload of files into the documents, so nearly all the documents have files. The files are stored in the NSF as $FILE and displayed in the documents as links.
I am using Adobe Acrobat Pro to create PDFs from the documents and need to include the file attachments within the PDFs, however the PDFs just include links to the files, not the attachments. Can I write an agent to run against the documents to get those files and embed them within the documents? When I view those documents through the client, I see all of the HTML etc. and then at the bottom of the document, the file attachments appear. When I view these same documents in the browser, the file attachments do not appear. If I could merely ensure that they are there, then when running the PDF generator in Acrobat Pro, they would be included in the PDFs and executable.
I am really stuck here, with no other way to 'archive' this notes database with all the data intact.
Thanks in advance for any insights!!
Ginni
There is a commercial product from Swing Software that does this. I hear that it's quite good, but I've never used it. Let me explain why...
The way I usually end up doing this is just quick-and-dirty. I write an agent to export the files, using the document UNID as part of the filename. The same agent exports all the data fields from the document into a CSV file, and I add a column with the filename of the extracted attachment. In your case, I would add two columns -- one for the extracted attachment(s), and one for the generated PDF. The CSV serves as an index for the exported data. It can be imported into something more friendly, or just left as-is and brought up in Excel, depending on the customer's usage requirements and available systems. I've recommended Swing Software's product and offered to explore other ideas for developing code (e.g., using wkhtmltopdf for Domino web apps to capture a WYSIWYG rendering based on an HTML crawl) for PDF rendering of Notes documents for a couple of clients, but none of them have justified the cost that would be involved in buying licenses and/or writing the code. Quick and dirty always seems to win, even when there are retention and eDiscovery considerations taken into account.
I'm building a tool in Google App Scripts that compares an original pdf form (with blank fillable fields - no OCR should be necessary) to the completed field. Both documents are stored in the same google drive.
My general strategy is as follows:
Parse blank pdf form into an array of rows
Parse completed pdf form into an array of rows
Compare to find differences (the values that got filled in).
I'm using mogsdad's Apps Script pdfToText utility, which was successfully able to parse the blank form perfectly. The problem I've run into is that when I try to parse a completed form, all of the data in the fillable fields gets lost.
I've established that the loss of information happens at the following line in the code:
var gdocFile = Drive.Files.insert(resource, pdfFile, insertOpts);
When the pdf data is saved as a gdoc, any data in a fillable field goes missing.
I have established that if I open the pdf in DocHub or similar and save a copy (that is no longer editable), the data can be parsed.
My two plans of attack are either:
Find a way to parse a pdf with fillable forms, or
Find a way to 'flatten' the fillable forms out of a pdf so that it can be parsed (I'm not sure of the terminology around this).
Does anybody have any advice on where to look for a way to accomplish either option (or any other ideas)?
I feel like my problems with this are due to missing some knowledge about how PDFs work, rather than a javascript issue.
Thanks
We have a number of policies (about 150 or so) we make available for download on our webpage.
Recently, Management had us move from all policies residing in one PDF to one policy per PDF. Their reasoning was to make it easier for the end users to download the policy that they want, and to make it easier for us to replace them when they change.
Now, some end users are complaining that they want to download the whole set of policies as one large PDF. Maintaining both formats as independent documents not only doubles our work, but increases the likelihood of error.
Since these are changed often, what I would like to do is to build a script to instruct Adobe Acrobat Pro to combine these individual policy PDFs together in a specific order.
This doesn't have to be a scrip since a GUI method would also work.
Can this be done? If so, were can I look for examples?
Docotic.Pdf library can merge PDF files while maintaining outline (bookmarks) structure.
There is nothing special should be done. You just append all documents one after another and that's all.
using (PdfDocument pdf = new PdfDocument())
{
string[] filesToMerge = ...
foreach (string file in filesToMerge)
pdf.Append(file);
pdf.Save("merged.pdf");
}
I've been tasked with creating an editable PDF (or similar off-line accessible) form with certain fields (dropdown lists and the like) prepopulated with data. Based on what is selected in the dropdowns, other text fields will be populated with associated data.
Short of creating a Windows Form with 100+ different fields, is there software that has this capability? I know I can't be the only one with a task like this, but having Googled and searched up and down SO I've drawn a blank.
I felt this was the most appropriate exchange to post this in; apologies if I am mistaken.
EDIT
I have access to Acrobat Pro 7 at work, but it seems unable to do what I described above. Do I need a newer version of Acrobat to achieve what I'm after?
Have you considered using InfoPath? It has basically been designed for this purpose and can interact with external data sources (e.g. SharePoint / databases). You can then convert the InfoPath form to PDF if needed, either using your own code or using third party product such as the PDF Converter for SharePoint
I worked on this product so the usual disclaimers apply.
If you want to do a professional job, you need to use the right tool (Adobe Acrobat Pro):
http://www.adobe.com/products/acrobatpro.html
We have some government forms that we want to be able to fill from mysql database and print automatically with php script. I downloaded demo of Adobe Acrobat and LiveCycle Designer and started playing with it.
Only problem is that pdf files theat we use are locked with password. More specifically - document assembly page extraction, creation of template pages are not allowed.
What is best way to access pdf to add fields. Is there a way to "unlock" or re-import as pdf. As last resort I could probably scan documents and re-import
Depending on the volume and frequency, you may want to consider using the server-based piece of LiveCycle which would allow you to unlock, add data to, then re-lock the PDFs.
The LiveCycle Unlock Password Encrypted PDF operation can un-lock the PDF then you can use other operations.
You could create a process that takes a locked PDF and citizen ID as inputs, unlocks the PDF, runs a mySQL query, merges that data into the form, then re-locks it and outputs the modified PDF.
Hope that helps,
-John