I’ve written about VBA and Acrobat JavaScript before, and I’ve also mentioned that you can combine VBA and JavaScript to access PDF form fields, but I still owe a sample for that. I had to answer another question today about how to exactly do that, so I whipped up a quick sample program that demonstrates the use of the JavaScript Object (JSO) to read and write AcroForm fields.
We start the same way as in my old VBA sample to create a VBA program that references the Acrobat TLB and to add a button to a document. When we now use the following script as the button handler, we can work with form fields:
Private Sub CommandButton1_Click()
Dim AcroApp As Acrobat.CAcroApp
Dim theForm As Acrobat.CAcroPDDoc
Dim jso As Object
Dim text1, text2 As String
Set AcroApp = CreateObject("AcroExch.App")
Set theForm = CreateObject("AcroExch.PDDoc")
theForm.Open ("C:\temp\sampleForm.pdf")
Set jso = theForm.GetJSObject
' get the information from the form fields Text1 and Text2
text1 = jso.getField("Text1").Value
text2 = jso.getField("Text2").Value
MsgBox "Values read from PDF: " & text1 & " " & text2
' set a text field
Dim field2 As Object
Set field2 = jso.getField("Text2")
field2.Value = 13 ' assign the number 13 to the fields value
' get the information from the form fields Text1 and Text2
text1 = jso.getField("Text1").Value
text2 = jso.getField("Text2").Value
MsgBox "Values read from PDF: " & text1 & " " & text2
theForm.Close
AcroApp.Exit
Set AcroApp = Nothing
Set theForm = Nothing
MsgBox "Done"
End Sub
This program requires a PDF file with text fields called “Text1″ and “Text2″ to be stored as C:\temp\sampleForm.pdf. With the explanation in the previous two blog posts, it should not be hard to understand what’s going on here. The only new command introduced is the getField() function, which returns a form field. The form field object has a property “value” which contains the actual value that’s assigned to the field. Give it a try and let me know how it works for you. The updated form field is not saved (because the document does not get saved) – I’ll leave that up to the reader to figure out.
Also, this program will not work with XFA forms (the ones you create in Designer). For those, you need to use the XFA DOM to access the form data. For anybody interested in XFA forms, the LifeCycle Designer ES Scripting Reference is a must read.
Hi there,
This is exactly what I am looking for. Thanks so much.
However, my assignments are a bit different. I am wondering if you can give me a hand.
The data source:
1. An excel spreadsheet storing the raw data
2. A PDF file with an interactive form used to store the data input by the user according to the above excel spreadsheet
My assignments:
1. input the raw data from excel spreadsheet to the PDF interactive form
2. double check if the data input in the PDF interactive form is correct.
I am not allowed to convert the Excel spreadsheet to the PDF file directly as the PDF file is the template with precise paragraphing and wording embedded. It is a heavy job when there are over hundreds of number. I am thinking if the excel VBA can do both assignments automatically or at least double check my input.
Thanks.
Wayne
Hi khk,
I have adobe 9.1 professional and excel 2007, adobe TLB added.
F8 stepinto F8 found “Runtime error ’424′, object required”
debug at this code ” text1 = jso.getField(“Text1″).Value”
don’t know why?
Thanks
Wayne
oh, “t” not “T”, i got it.
btw, we can use the call function to save the updates.
call theForm.Save(PDSaveFull,”C:\temp\sampleForm.pdf).
How do you test to make sure that the field exists in the form. I don’t want an error message when the user selects the wrong .PDF form to import into the spreadsheet.
“On Error goto 0″ does not trap the error.
Is there a method such as FieldExists(“text1″) that I could use to trap that error before using the getField() method.
I don’t know about VB (remember, I said that I am not working in VB). You can do test if a field exists in JavaScript by testing the value returned by getField():
var f = this.getField("test");
if (f == null)
{
app.alert("f does not exist");
}