Glenn -

Most of those forms can be made into interactive forms (which can be
completed with nothing more than the Acrobat Reader, the free software).
To do this you need Acrobat Exchange which has several tools, including
form fields which can be inserted and customized for various options,
e.g., font, number of characters, etc.  You can also use Exchange to
create forms which launch other applications, for instance, if the
indirect costs are limited or there is required cost share, you can launch
Excel from inside the Acrobat form and complete calculations on
underrecovery and total cost share.  Exchange can do many more things
which are quite useful (direct web link, launch an email message, ...).  I
urge you to check out the full Acrobat package which includes the Reader
(free portion), Acrobat Exchange, and Acrobat Distiller (postscript
handler).  If you have specific questions, contact me directly at my
personal email address.  I may be able to give you some assistance.

Rosemary

On Thu, 19 Mar 1998, Glenn Krell wrote:

> Hello all,
>
> Here is a general interest ERA (electronic research administration)
> question.  One facet of ERA is that many of us download various agency
> forms from the web using Adobe Acrobat.
>
> Has anyone had any success making those pdf (portable document format)
> forms into "interactive" forms using Acrobat 3.01?  Note that that is the
> software you pay for, as opposed to the free software available at
> http://www.adobe.com/prodindex/acrobat/readstep.html  for reading and
> printing pdf files from websites (quite useful by the way).
>
> The problem we are having is: we download and print these agency pdf forms,
> and then have to use a typewriter to fill them out.  Has anyone made
> progress in this area? or is there a better method for doing this?
>
> Many thanks in advance!
> - Glenn Krell
>

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