Any plans for PDF form editing?

[Clavote]

I'll add my "me too" for support of PDF forms in publisher
In the mean time I'll have to use PDF-Xchange pro ...

not bad though

CLav

[davidmillard]

I see I am not the only one looking for the ability to create fillable forms 

I wrongly assumed this would be available 

Please hurry and add soon 

[AVC]

This is the one feature that is missing for me that would allow me to ditch Adobe completely. Currently it's time consuming to have to design my form in Designer, save as PDF, then create the form in Acrobat. 

Not to mention that if one of the team wants something on the form adjusted, I have to go through the whole process in Acrobat again.

Please add fillable elements in Publisher or Designer soon!

[Tegwyn]

+1. Making fillable PDF forms would be a nice feature for me, too.

[AlanPickup]

+1 definitely needed

[Skyfarer]

Adding my vote for this as well! Desperate to drop Acrobat!

[svoop]

Big +1

In fact, it's the only shortcoming which keeps me from switching to Affinity Publisher right now. Any progress with this feature would be very much appreciated since I currently have to build the forms with LibreOffice which slowly drives me nuts!

[Chaosmeister]

I just opened one of my older PDF forms in Publisher and was very surprised I could not find the Forms feature and started googling it and found this thread. Major disappointment. I really would appreciate this feature a lot.

[CodeDog]

10 minutes ago, Chaosmeister said:

I just opened one of my older PDF forms in Publisher and was very surprised I could not find the Forms feature and started googling it and found this thread. Major disappointment. I really would appreciate this feature a lot.

I'm actually still waiting for this feature to be added before I purchase Publisher, Chaosmeister, since this would be "one" of my primary uses for the software.  As well as some of the other great features, of course.  But this feature is the main selling point for me.  Hopefully they will add it sometime soon...

[svoop]

9 minutes ago, CodeDog said:

But this feature is the main selling point for me.

Same here. IMHO, this is a killer feature with has the potential to attract a whole new clientele. After all, there is not a single decent PDF forms editor available for Mac!

[AndyQ]

Affinity have a good opportunity here, as Indesign does a shit job of creating PDF forms - it lets you add fields and controls but only in a very basic sense. You can set the font for a text field but you have to do it on a per-field basis - so if you have an order form with a list of 100 products in a table with fields for order qty you have to individually set the font and font size for each of those 100 fields - not only can't you apply any kind of "style" to them but you can't even set the default font that it assigns. On the topic of order forms and other such data-intensive tables, adding support for PDF scripting in the authoring environment would be killer. For example, an order form table would list products and prices, with user-fillable fields for the quanity they want to order. It would be sweet to be able to multiply that quality by the price data and show subtotals, then add those up for the total order amount. This can be done in the PDF itself but that's an awful approach - having to export a file then edit the exported version. To do this in the authoring package would be hugely more efficient and would make Publisher a must-have for PDF form publishing. Take advantage of Adobe's poor efforts in this area!

[Aphelon]

+1

@AndyQ is right,

it's extremely painful to work with Acrobat to create Forms - Please Serif make my life easier - sad there seem to be not that many people gasping for that feature...

[MastroPino]

+1

[Alek D]

+1 would love to see this. I just recently started using Publisher and love it but this is a big gap vs what I want to do.

[ivan.dedos]

+1

[AndyQ]

On 12/13/2019 at 9:31 PM, Aphelon said:

+1

@AndyQ is right,

it's extremely painful to work with Acrobat to create Forms - Please Serif make my life easier - sad there seem to be not that many people gasping for that feature...

I've just finished a job in Indesign CC doing tabular price-list/ordering forms to PDF and in the process have discovered a massive pile of bugs in Adobe's implementation. Indesign has a "tab order" panel for setting the tab order of all fields/controls, but it doesn't work in certain instances - for example if you have fields in table cells (and tables seem the perfect way to set up a spreadsheet like product inventory/order form). Tab orders also get screwed up if a table flows over multiple pages and that flow is changed - it's fine when you first create a table, but if you delete a row or change the page breaks then any fields that move from one page to another completely disappear from the tab-order list. I could go on with a huge list of Indesign bugs, but basically what I'm saying is that Adobe have put f-all effort and testing into forms support for Indesign, so Affinity could almost make a case for Publisher as a PDF forms creation tool if they put some work into it. For the price of Publisher it would be something big companies could easily afford to implement en-masse. My basic recipe for required functionality would be:

1) a toolbox of form field objects that can be placed anywhere in the layout, encapsulated in table cells or within nested frames, anywhere any other object can be placed

2) be able to set all the properties for that field/control that acrobat supports, including naming fields. Perhaps an "auto name" function would be handy too, that looks at the reading order of fields/controls and assigns numeric prefixes that would match that order (e.g. button_001, field_001). This would be handy if a large table of fields was edited, with rows deleted, for regenerating a numeric list of fields

3) be able to set the tab order for all controls on a page/document in a single, expandable easy-to-use list

4) allow styling of field controls to an extend supported by PDF, with embedding of fonts used in fields

5) allow multi-selection of fields for applying properties changes or application of styles to them simultaneously (not possible in Indesign!).

I'm sure there would be a lot more that could be done, but those are the main things that have cropped up whilst I was working on a "real" project.

[miholinc]

+1

[Toko]

I'm really exited about Affinity Designer and in most of my works I exclusively use it. Unfortunately I always switch back to InDesign when I intend to design forms. So I would also be very happy if form editing would be added to the scope of Affinity Designer :)

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

[Etdronehome]

+1

[Joz]

I would like to have PDF forms creation too, if possible.

[mad99]

+1

I also have to do complicated workarounds. Would be a really big simplification in projects with often changing pdf-documents.

So, in most projects with pdf for web!

[Serif Since v1]

+1

[wonderings]

To me this really seems like it is something for a PDF reader/editor. Publisher is a page layout application and there is a lot still that needs to be done to bring it up to Indesign level. This would not be a must have feature to me as I think it belongs elsewhere. Adobe has Acrobat DC which is where you would do this. Maybe in time Affinity will look at their own version of PDF reader/editor. 

[Annabella_K]

2 hours ago, wonderings said:

To me this really seems like it is something for a PDF reader/editor. Publisher is a page layout application and there is a lot still that needs to be done to bring it up to Indesign level. This would not be a must have feature to me as I think it belongs elsewhere. Adobe has Acrobat DC which is where you would do this. Maybe in time Affinity will look at their own version of PDF reader/editor. 

I don't agree it belongs elsewhere. Because the form is strongly related to the layout. If it's a separate app and you change the layout, you need to start the form again. I formerly used Scribus, which is a free DTP app, and even that has form creating function, but unfortunately, it's not compatible with Affinity. Adobe users can do it in InDesign too. I think Acrobat (or any separate app) is useful for those who don't create the layout themselves. Although, if it's not considered an essential function to the majority, I can imagine it as a plugin or connected as a Persona. So it's a separate software but still can be used within Publisher.

[wonderings]

21 minutes ago, Annabella_K said:

I don't agree it belongs elsewhere. Because the form is strongly related to the layout. If it's a separate app and you change the layout, you need to start the form again. I formerly used Scribus, which is a free DTP app, and even that has form creating function, but unfortunately, it's not compatible with Affinity. Adobe users can do it in InDesign too. I think Acrobat (or any separate app) is useful for those who don't create the layout themselves. Although, if it's not considered an essential function to the majority, I can imagine it as a plugin or connected as a Persona. So it's a separate software but still can be used within Publisher.

Not sure you can actually create the fillable forms in Indesign. If you can I have not seen it. I do not make a lot of fillable PDF forms but the few I have done I setup in Indesign. I then export as PDF, open in Acrobat Pro and then go to the "prepare form". It auto detects boxes I have and for those it does not I add them, move them where they need to be, assign parameters for the box. I do all that fillable functionality in Acrobat, the layout all done in Indesign.