Adobe Community: Are There Expandable Text Fields?

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40. MisterB!,

Dec 7, 2009 12:42 PM in reply to pguerett

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I have been working with LiveCycle 9 for a couple months now. I have built this form and now I need all the test in the comment areas to be fully visible when the form is printed. I cannot get the whole from to move as the text expands. It just overlaps. I have been researching and trying different things for a couple days now. I understand the grouping in sub forms (got that to work), but it messes with my formatting and overlaps other objects. I am probably missing something, or my form has too much going on? I am not too sure. Any help/suggestions are welcome. I know how I build it is not optimal, but I want to see if I can make it work.

Attachments:

PAForm_Final_3_test.pdf (683.0 K)

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41. pguerett,

Dec 8, 2009 6:39 AM in reply to MisterB!

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The way you have built your form is limiting your ability to make it flow. I worked on the last page only to give you a feel for what you will need to do. The addition of the lines surrounding the boxes is not a good idea on a static form (unless you are only dealing with horizontal lines. The vertical lines will not grow or resize based on the size of a field. A better option is to use the border tab on the field object. This will grow according to field size and will give you the effect you desire. You have one big text field that is spaced appropriately for the captions of each field. The text box does not know anything about the isze of the field so this is not good either. I changed this to use the caption property of the field (setting the location for the caption on top) and this gives the same effiect but because it is tied to the field will react when field size is changed. Lastly the page subform needs to be set to flowed for the fields to be resized. In doing this all fields are left justified to the content area. I then added a top and left margin of .75 in to the Page subform to get the position where you wanted it. On a multipage form this can become tricky as you woudl not define pages anymore .....simply letting the fields flow and letting the product decide where the page breaks go is what is required. You woudl only define Page1 and put everything on that page (at Design time).

This will be a lot of work to redo the form ....another option is to have the text resized to fit the box as the users type info into the field. I did this on page 3 in the comments fields. The issue here is that if they type in too much info the font becomes so small it is not readable. The advantage is that you do not have to redo the whole form. let me know if you want to do this and I will show you how it is done.

Paul

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42. MisterB!,

Dec 8, 2009 10:40 AM in reply to pguerett

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Hi Paul,

Thanks a lot for you help. I had a feeling I knew what your answer was giong to be and that I wouldn't like it. Unfortunatly the text resizing option will not work in this situation. Is is possible to see how you formated the one page? The formatting and the left justification is the biggest issue. I would like to keep the format as much as possible while having the text expandable. Does this mean I need every object in one subform? Including all the text boxes and radial buttons?

Thanks.

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43. pguerett,

Dec 8, 2009 12:07 PM in reply to MisterB!

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You can keep your formatting. The secret is in breaking up the page into logical parts. For exampel Header, addres block, repeating rows, questions, answers footers. Then you woudl wrap all of the objects that make upa section into a Positioned subform that is below the flowed subform. There is a good example of this technique in the samples that ship. Have a look at this one in particular....start from your Designer install folder and locate this structure:

\EN\Samples\Forms\Purchase Order\Dynamic Interactive\Forms

Paul

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44. MisterB!,

Dec 8, 2009 1:54 PM in reply to pguerett

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Ahh. Alright, that did help a lot. I think rebuilding might be easier than cleaning up this mess I have.

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45. PO Secretary,

Dec 10, 2009 1:17 PM in reply to MisterB!

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Thanks again for all your help Paul. I was working on a test page today and so far things seem to be flowing correctly. I too am going

to just start my document over and put in the subforms, etc as I go along as I did on my test page. I cannot get my typed document to flow properly.

Take Care~

Tammie

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46. PO Secretary,

Dec 11, 2009 6:59 AM in reply to PO Secretary

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Well so much for that idea. Now I can't figure out how to get the text field and text boxes to be beside each other.

Omg...this is so frustrating!!

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47. PO Secretary,

Dec 14, 2009 11:04 AM in reply to PO Secretary

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Hi~

I have started a new form and was wondering if someone could look at it to see if I am doing it (or at least some of it) correctly before I continue on.

Thanks,

Tammie

PS: I never did figure out my first project, that's still on the back burner!

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48. Kevin Cavallo,

Dec 16, 2009 9:39 AM in reply to PO Secretary

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Tammie, post your form to the forum and we'll take a look.

Kevn

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49. PO Secretary,

Dec 16, 2009 11:06 AM in reply to Kevin Cavallo

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Here it is Kevin...thanks for offering to help. I have had

two people look at it already and it's not flowing like it should be.

Attachments:

Copy_of_ISP_test3_pauls2.pdf (172.3 K)

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50. Kevin Cavallo,

Dec 22, 2009 8:11 AM in reply to PO Secretary

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Hi Tammi, sorry I'm just getting around to looking at this - busy time of the year! Do you still need assistance or have you figured it out?

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51. PO Secretary,

Dec 22, 2009 8:39 AM in reply to Kevin Cavallo

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I need major assistance when you have time...thank you!

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52. mbirt,

Sep 16, 2011 6:32 AM in reply to CarlVL123

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I just learned LiveCycle -- created a 20 page form -- then was asked to make expandable text fields.

I made the fields expandable thanks to this forum but in order to make the fields below push down and create a new page I have to put "Flowed" on the main subform and when I do that it scatters all my other fields on the page.

Some pages are not as bad but it makes for a ton of work.

Is there any trick to make the page flow without messing up the formatting on the page.

Also I'd like to attach my file but I can't seem to figure out how.

Thanks

Marilyn

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53. scheckc,

Jun 22, 2012 2:28 PM in reply to Kevin Cavallo

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Thanks for this advise Kevin, I got a form working 'somewhat' from your explanation, but I am having one mild issue that is hopefully a quick fix. On my form, when the text fields expand, the form will append a blank page once the fields begin to get shoved off the initial page, but the text doens't actually print on that page. I dont mean literally on "a printed job". I mean the form will seem to shove the fields and text off page one into nothingness and I just end up with page 2, 3, 4, ect all blank, white sheets.

I can upload the form upon request for anyones evaluation if need be.

Can anyone explain something simple I might be missing for this function to not work completely?

Thanks again, great community and tons of support!!!

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54. Kevin Cavallo,

Jun 25, 2012 6:57 AM in reply to scheckc

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Sounds like the form isn't set up to flow correctly from page to page. Please post the form so I can take a look.

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55. scheckc,

Jun 25, 2012 1:56 PM in reply to Kevin Cavallo

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Here is the link to the form as I have uploaded it to the acrobat website.

https://acrobat.com/#d=h1EBlj*C2dGJk1h4RoOxmQ

Thanks for your help.

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56. scheckc,

Jun 27, 2012 6:13 AM in reply to scheckc

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Anyone have any luck with looking at my document linked above to see what I screwed up? lol

Thanks in advance for any and all help in this matter!

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57. Kevin Cavallo,

Jun 27, 2012 6:32 AM in reply to scheckc

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Yes! Your form is close to being correct. The issue is that the root subform "(untitled subform (page 1)" is set to positioned content, so even though the "TextFieldContainer" subform is set to Flowed content, the root subform is restricting the growth to one page. The simple fix will be to set the root subform to flowed content.

The above fix will mess up the layout since the positional layout that you designed with will not be enforced any more, but fortunately it won't affect this form much since the majority of the content is already set up as flowed in the second subform. You should only have to move the heading and logo up to the top of the page by moving them ahead of the TextFieldContainer subform. In flowed content the order of the fields in the hierarchy will be the order that they are layed out.

Also, if you want the heading and logo to repeat on each page, you might want to move them to the master page instead. Depends on what you want the form to do.

Hope this helps.

Kevin

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58. scheckc,

Jun 27, 2012 6:35 AM in reply to Kevin Cavallo

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Thanks for the response Kevin. I will work on that.

Again, I really appreciate the help.

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59. scheckc,

Jun 27, 2012 6:47 AM in reply to scheckc

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OK, that definately did it. I created my master page with a header and footer. Thanks soooo much for the help. 1 more quick question about the way this form is behaving though. My form is automatically appending a 2nd blank page even without anything flowing into it. I know that will be complained about "why does it waste paper and print a blank, blah blah blah".. I was curious if you could shed some light on why this might be?

Here is the freshly formatted document...

https://acrobat.com/#d=h1EBlj*C2dGJk1h4RoOxmQ

Thanks so much for the help, you have all been a godsend so far. RAISES FOR EVERYONE!! oh wait, I guess I can't call that shot.

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60. Kevin Cavallo,

Jun 27, 2012 8:09 AM in reply to scheckc

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I think it's a relic from when you converted the topmost subform from positioned to flowed. You don't need that subform any more. You need to do two things:

1. Delete the (untitled subform)(page 1) subform. Highlight it in the hierarchy, right-click and select "unwrap subform" from the menu.

2. You'll see that your remaining content moves up to overlay the header. This is because you were using a 1" margin at the top of the subform to space the content below the heading. This is not the best way to do this. The master page has a content area (the magenta dashed rectangle) that defines where each page's content will be layed out. The items on each page will get placed starting at the top of where the content area is defined, then layed out in order down the page according to the order in the hierarchy. When a page's content flows below the bottom of the content area, a new page is added and layout continues at the top of the next page, again at the location defined by the content area. To accomodate headers/footers, you adjust the placement of the content area on the master page so that it starts below the bottom of the header and ends above any footer that you might have.

In your case, click on the (untitled Content Area) on the hierarchy. The display should show the master page and the content area will be selected. Drag the top of the content area down so that it begins below the header. That will fix the overlay. If you want a larger bottom spacing on your document, you would drag the lower part of the content area up, creating a larger bottom margin.

Hope that explanation is clear. I will take that raise since you're offering...

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61. scheckc,

Jun 27, 2012 10:22 AM in reply to Kevin Cavallo

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This was the case, again, your knowledge is greatly appreciated. Also, thanks for the tip on the content area. I am now using that area the way it was intended to be used.

Thanks for all the assistance, you guys really know your stuff.

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Are There Expandable Text Fields?

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