Populate a drop-down with over 500 items

[DarylGS]

Just for some background, I am designing a form to be emailed and filled out by the recepient using LiveCycle Designer 8,0.  In this form, I want to create a list of all cities in my state (over 550).  Apparently, there is no way to directly populate the drop-down other than typing each city individually.  However, I have searched the forums and found that there is possibly a script that can be created to accomplish this.  The problem is that I have practically NO  knowledge about writing code.  There is a tool I have in my Programs menu called "Extendscript" but I don't even know if I can use it for this purpose (nor would I know how if it could be used).  By now it is obvious that I am a very "basic" user, but any help on this would be appreciated.

Thanks

Daryl

[_Nith_]

No need to type all the cities once again.

If you have the list of cities in a text or excel document, you can simply copy them and past in the drop-down list field.

Is this what you need?

Nith

[_Nith_]

Copy paste from Excel/text document will not work with earlier versions of designer.

Another approach is to modify the xml source.

Something looks weired? Send me the list of cities. I will prepare a simple pdf from where you can copy the drop-down field to your form.

Nith

[DarylGS]

I attached an RTF doc and replied via email. I thought I read somewhere on these discussions where you can't do an attachment through email, but instead had to do them through the discussion board. However, I don't see anything in the Reply window that allows me to do that so I hope this works.

[_Nith_]

neither will work.

so pls send ur RTF document to my email directly at  nith.mof@gmail.com

Nith

[DarylGS]

It's on the way!  THANK YOU!

[DarylGS]

Thank you very, very much for your efforts!  It works perfectly!  If only there were more people who used their knowledge to be helpful and kind in this world....   

[_Nith_]

You are welcome!

If you are using LiveCycle Designer 9, it is pretty simple to copy these values from clipboard to dropdown list items.

Nith

[DarylGS]

Yep. Maybe it's time to upgrade to Acrobat Pro 9. For only $230 US, it's probably worth it. Do you know of any good sources and references I can use to learn BASIC coding that can be used in this application? I'm not looking to become a pro at it, but I just want to be able to do some basic things.

[_Nith_]

The internal help system available within Designer is enough to learn the basics.

However the following PDF will help you to understand the complete javascript APIs..

http://groups.google.com/group/livecycle/web/Acrobat%20JavaScript%20Scripting.pdf

Nith

[Former Community Member]

Hi Nith,

I've just read this forum post and I am having exactly the same problem tring to populate a drop downlist! Would you be able to help at all please? I have a list of over 100 items in excel / notedpad (see below for examples) where users completing a form will only select 1 of these items. I cannot seem to find an easy way to do this despite several attempts at trying. I thought I could copy and paste the list into the xml source (enclosed in text  tags but this does not seem to work and comes up with an error message. I'm new to livecycle as well so this does not help eiether!

I'm using Livecycle designer ES 8.2 that comes with Acrobat Pro 9. Any help would be greatly appreciated.

Example Items-

A    Medicine and Dentistry   
A100    Pre-clinical Medicine   
A200    Pre-clinical Dentistry   
A300    Clinical Medicine   
A400    Clinical Dentistry   
A900    Others in Medicine and Dentistry   
A990    Medicine and Dentistry not elsewhere classified   
B    Subjects allied to Medicine   
B100    "Anatomy, Physiology and Pathology"   
B110    Anatomy   
B120    Physiology   
B130    Pathology   
B131    Cellular Pathology   
B132    Pathobiology   
B140    Neuroscience   
B160    Physiotherapy   
B190    "Anatomy, Physiology and Pathology not elsewhere classified"   
B200    "Pharmacology, Toxicology and Pharmacy"  

Thanks,

Ken

[_Nith_]

Send your data file to nith.mof@gmail.com

Nith

[Sou_rabh1]

Hi Nith,

I have designed a pdf form basically a CV format to be filled by the users while applying for job, in that form i have used many form controls namely checkbox, listbox, radio-buttons, drop-downs and so on.. My problem is that whenever i want to add a new location or update drop-down i have to do it at multiple places. For example i have a drop down for Nationality or Country that is repeated through out the form (independent of each other), is there a way to update the dropdown list values in one place and not have to edit each field specifically?

In other words is it possible to have the form pull "lookup" data from one source? meaning if i update the nationality drop-down at one place then it should reflect the changes at all the other places where am using the nationality drop-down.

Can anyone help me out in this please.....

Thanks

Sourabh

[Former Community Member]

Hi Nith

As you told using LiveCycle Designer 9, it is simple to copy the values from clipboard to dropdown list items. Pls post the steps involved that would help me to proceed.

Thanks

Balaji

[_Nith_]

which steps Balaji? Copy paste in LC Designer 9 or earlier version updates in xml source?