Form controls - unable to drag a form field to a brand new blank document

users
#1

Anyone ever encountered this?

I finally decided to convert a few of our PDF forms into PDF fillable
forms, and thought this was going to be easy.

No luck with the existing documents, so I tried with a brand new blank
writer document...

I open the Form Controls Toolbar, but when I try to drag one of the
fields, it just doesn't work.

Yes, Design Mode is enabled, and the fields are not greyed out like they
are when Design Mode is disabled - they look 'active, and if I mouse
over them the tooltip appears, and if I click on them they react - but
dragging them off of the toolbar to the document does nothing...

#2

Hi Charles,

Anyone ever encountered this?

I finally decided to convert a few of our PDF forms into PDF fillable
forms, and thought this was going to be easy.

No luck with the existing documents, so I tried with a brand new blank
writer document...

I open the Form Controls Toolbar, but when I try to drag one of the
fields, it just doesn't work.

Once selected, draw the control in the document, it will appear then.

Kind regards
Sophie

#3

Hah! Thanks Sophie!

I had googled on how to do this, and the page I found said to drag it. I
guess drawing makes sense in that it gives you more control initially,
but dragging should, in my opinion, at least still work and result in
some kind of default sized field being dropped into the document, that
you can then resize and/or manipulate.

But, no worries, I'm off to finish my forms.

Thanks again Sophie!

#4

You're welcome :slight_smile: to access the properties of the control, right click
on it and choose Control. In the dialog you have a lot of things you can
set.

Kind regards
Sophie

#5

Awesome...

One question though.

In my first test, when a user dbl-clicks the form, it just opens the form.

Is there a way to force it to act like a template, and open a
new/unsaved copy in fillable mode?

I will be putting these on a shared drive that users have read-only
access to.

Thanks again!

#6

Hmmm... but I would also like the newly created/saved copy to *not* act
like a template any longer (s0, basically the same way that Libreoffice
Writer templates work).

This may not be possible, so if not, it will be acceptable the way it
is. Since the user don't have write access to the form itself, they
would get an error if they tried to save/overwrite it, so I'll just
instruct them that they have to 'File > Save As' to save theirs.

#7

Is there a way to force it to act like a template, and open a
new/unsaved copy in fillable mode?

Hmmm... but I would also like the newly created/saved copy to *not* act
like a template any longer (s0, basically the same way that Libreoffice
Writer templates work).

This may not be possible, so if not, it will be acceptable the way it
is. Since the user don't have write access to the form itself, they
would get an error if they tried to save/overwrite it, so I'll just
instruct them that they have to 'File > Save As' to save theirs.

The form has two states: design mode on or off. In the Control toolbar,
you have an icon (last on the bottom right) named Form design. Clicking
on it will activate another toolbar that will allow you to switch
between the mode on/off. This toolbar has also a button to allow you to
open the form in design mode or in fill mode.
The other icons of this toolbar will help you for the design of the form.
You can activate this toolbar via View > Toolbar > Form design too.
Kind regards
Sophie