metaViper

At some point every business needs to gather information from its customers or employees by asking them to fill out a form. Whether it’s a sign-up form for benefits or a survey on the latest business expo, that information can be critical in making decisions that align with strategic goals.

But there’s a problem. The company that created Acrobat and the PDF standard, Adobe, restricts who is able to save form data when using the free Acrobat Reader. As a compromise, the 8.0 release of Acrobat Professional provides an option for allowing Acrobat Reader users to save form data. However, the terms of use restrict this functionality to 500 users. It’s unclear whether that means 500 users per license of Acrobat Professional or if that means a 500 person limit for each form created. Still, for smaller data gathering this is a good solution if you want to buy or upgrade to Acrobat Professional 8.

A free solution is to use PDFescape, a product by CTdeveloping. To use PDFescape (1) upload a PDF file, (2) insert their generated JavaScript code into your web page. They also offer a more powerful solution that enables features like adding hyperlinks, and installation on your own server.