Access data in Acrobat Form

[Joshann]

I have a relatively complicated fillable form that someone else created in Acrobat. I would like to be able to fill it out using data from Access tables. So basically, I would like to do a mail merge with data from Access and an Acrobat pdf form. Is that even possible?

 

[Ranman256]

could you not just make a report based on a form,
fill out the form, then
print the report to Acrobat so that it looks just like the fillable pdf form?

 

[Joshann]

could you not just make a report based on a form,
fill out the form, then
print the report to Acrobat so that it looks just like the fillable pdf form?

Thanks for your response, but no not really. As I mentioned, this is a complicated form. It is three pages long with lots of embedded tables and many fields. The form is created by and used in Federal Court, so it must look EXACTLY the same. It would take so long to try to recreate the form exactly that there would no longer be any time-saving benefit in doing so.

 

[Joshann]

I have figured it out from the last message on this post:
https://forums.adobe.com/thread/578121
I just need to export my Access data to a text file first. As the poster said, it's not really a mail merge, but it will work for me.

 

[speakers_86]

I see two options. One is to find a way to convert the pdf to a jpg, create a report in Access, and use the picture property to reference the jpg. Then just align the controls so they 'fill in' the pdf.

The other way is to have Access create an xfdf to fill the fields. I was messing with this method recently, and here is how I was filling in a form:

 <?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<xfdf xmlns="[URL]http://ns.adobe.com/xfdf/[/URL]" xml:space="preserve">
<f href="a4856.pdf"/>
 <fields>
<field name="form1[0].Page1[0].Name[0]">
<value>abc</value>
</field>
</fields>
 </xfdf>

Good Luck