pdf with fill in fields

[Mike Revis]

Hi Group,
Access 2000 Winxppro

I have read quite a bit about printing an Access report as a pdf file.

I am currently using the cutepdf free version that will print the report to
a pdf file quite nicely.

But...
I have not seen any programs that suggests it can print an Access report to
a pdf file with fill in fields.

I occasionally have to email a report to clients and it would be nice if
they were able to complete some selected fields and email it onward.

As always any thoughts, comments or suggestions are welcome.

Mike

 

[SA]

Mike:

There is no way to output an Access report to an Adobe form and fill in
fields, period.

On the other hand, assuming you have a form template, Adobe Acrobat has a
JScript and JDBC capability that you can use to import and output a PDF's
form data to a database, including Access. There are examples of using
that on the Acrobat 6 CD, but not on the Acro 7 CDs. You should be able to
find out how to use that by searching the Acrobat SDK on the Adobe web.
(But it doesn't sound like you have Acrobat since you are using CutePDF.)
You can also do a Google search under Adobe, FDF and VB to see some methods
others have cooked up to parse a PDF form's data output file (an FDF) and to
import that data into databases, you can look for that in reverse as well.
However, that data would be output from a query, not from a report (which is
an image of data).

Last, at the same time, if you want to print a report that looks like a
filled in Acrobat form, open your form in Acrobat, use the SaveAs capability
to save the blank form as a jpeg, use that as a background on your Access
report and overlay the Access controls on the form fields. That way you can
show that data in a pseudo form (i.e. an image of it,) but you aren't
obviously filling the actual form.

Regards