PDF for MS Access

Question

I am trying to do the following for my school site: School registration is currently in print form. They would like applicants to fill out a PDF form on the Internet. Then they print, sign and send it to school. The school wants to be able to store the data entered by the applicant in PDF , so that upon receipt of the signed application they can simply approve the registration for this student without returning all the data about the students. The school system runs on MS Access (if it is important, which version can I find). Any ideas how I can implement import from my form in MS Access? Thanks.

Answer 1

I used a website called www.doculicious.com , which does pretty much this exact thing. You can download the PDF file and convert it to a web form. Anyone filling out a web form can download the completed PDF file and print it for signing. All data is stored in the system, and you can get it as XML or CSV for import into another database manually or use the API to execute this part automatically.

Answer 2

It depends on how you automatically want it. Fully automated case will

• Print Scan Using TWAIN
• Use the form recognition library to align the form back to the original and find areas with the necessary information.
• Use OCR to get information from the form (possibly ICR if handwritten)
• Find the source entry in Access
• Update record with new data

It's not easy - there are products that can help, but they are not cheap, and ICR is not very accurate.

I would suggest that you simply do # 4 and # 5 in Access and provide them with a screen on which the incoming form is processed - someone keys in the new data. This form

• Allows you to specify the record that you want to update (for example, with a name or ssn)
• Shows a record with fields for entering form data
• Saves it when you are done.

This is right in Access.

Answer 3

The school can use the regular HTML form on its website and ask parents to submit data online. Your server side can store the submitted data in your database and generate a unique presentation tag / key / code back to the parent element on the web page. When parents come to school and mention the key, print their details on paper and ask them to sign. You load paper and the data is already in your database.

Answer 4

If the intention is to import from an electronic form, I used Adobe LifeCycle Designer to complete this very task. Basically, you can create XML output of PDF form data using the email client for the end user and the data from the XML file read from the Inbox into the fields of your MS Access database. Of course, this solution has some serious limitations regarding which applications should be used, as well as which use cases are processed, for example, this solution is in a controlled environment in which all users should send such requests there, where, perhaps, your requirements can mail correspondence must also be processed.

Answer 5

I would add an answer to VSU , suggesting using Google Forms for data entry. You just need a free account, and then use Docs to create a new form.

It is very easy to configure, and the presented results are displayed in a Google spreadsheet, which can be downloaded as a regular Excel file (which simplifies import into Access).

You have several ways to share the form:

• Send link to the form
• Paste form into email
• Paste the form into your website, which is probably the best solution for you.

Once the data is in your database, you can easily create a report and a simple search form to find the name of the applicant and print the form.

It does not take more than an hour to start and have something functional. You can always improve it later as soon as you experiment with it.

The advantage of using Google forms is that it is free, it works well, and you are safe enough, since you do not directly connect your database to the Internet (and not the risk of SQL injection ).