Hello,

For a project that I am working on, we wish to develop software that
takes in the data of an entity and automatically fills out specific
fileds in an editable PDF form. This is for an accounting purpose. The
name, address etc. of a company are to be filed on forms x,y and z -
as instructed by the state government (which has provided these forms
in PDF format with editable fields). We are trying to develop software
that takes in this data (e.g. through a VB front-end) and
automatically populates the pertinent fields in the x,y and z forms.

How do we send the data into these specific fields in the editable PDF forms?

Thanks, in advance.

Regards,
Pat79

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Clarification of Question by pat79-ga on 13 Jul 2004 03:54 PDT

*TIP*
I am willing to give a $2.50 tip for an accurate and complete answer.

Thanks.
Pat79

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Request for Question Clarification by googleexpert-ga on 17 Jul 2004 18:18 PDT

Hello pat79,
I would like to know if License costs are an issue.
I found a library [ABCpdf] that offers what I think to be an easy API
There is a VB Example for reading and writing eForms at:
http://www.websupergoo.com/helppdf4/source/4-examples/15-eform2.htm

There is a 30-day evaluation available at:
http://www.websupergoo.com/downloadftp.htm

Please let me know if that is what you are looking for.

Thanks.
-googleexpert

http://www.irs.gov/formspubs/lists/0,,id=97817,00.html
Caution: the Acrobat Reader does not allow you to save your fill-in form to disk.

http://www.mail-archive.com/delphi@ns3.123.co.nz/msg01964.html
http://www.pdftron.com/index.html

-> http://www.o2sol.com/public/webui/home.shtml

I am not a Google Answers Researcher. I think the last link might
help, but it'd be best to contact them first :).
Google Searches:
automatic fill pdf fill-in form and print
mail merge to a pdf form

There are several ways you can accomplish this task. The most straight
forward would be if you have access to the full version of Acrobat on
every machine that needs to do this merging: You can write a VB
program that uses Acrobat's API (which is documented pretty well, but
you may need a membership in the Adobe Solutions Network to get access
to all the documents - at least $195 per year).
If you don't want to use Acrobat or, if you need a solution that works
on a server and therefore cannot use Acobat, you can work with 3rd
party components that support the merging of data with PDF forms. This
page from the PlanetPDF store has links to a number of packages that
can do this for you: http://www.pdfstore.com/category.asp?CtgID=4
Just make sure that you select something that does not require Acrobat
if you don't want to use (or cannot use) Acrobat.

You can find more information about the Acrobat SDK on this page:
http://partners.adobe.com/asn/tech/pdf/acrobatsdks.jsp

I just found this http://www.koivi.com/fill-pdf-form-fields/ which
takes a different tactic, basically replacing text in an existing PDF.
While it doesn't necessarily apply to this situation directly, I am
putting it here for bookmark information.

This is a free comment.