Stefan Cameron on Forms
Building intelligent forms using Adobe LiveCycle Designer

Tip: Accessing Form Properties Preview Tab

Did you know you could quickly access the Preview tab in the Form Properties dialog from the PDF Preview tab’s context menu?

My friend Angie Okamoto (Easel Solutions) was the one who originally pointed this out to me. It’s incredibly useful, especially when you’re switching between various preview data files (or options like interactive vs non-interactive), because it loads the dialog and activates the Preview tab in a single step. This saves both mouse travel time and one click which adds-up to a lot, if you do this frequently.

Right-click on the PDF Preview tab to get the context menu:

Choose “Form Properties” and you’re right on the Preview tab:

Another option is to set a Shortcut Key for the Form Properties dialog, though this won’t auto-select the Preview tab (but still saves some mouse travel and a couple of clicks). You can do this via the “Tools > Keyboard Shortcuts” dialog:

Unfortunately, I don’t recall what version of Designer introduced the PDF Preview tab’s context menu nor which one added Keyboard Shortcuts but I think both should be available since version 8.0.

Posted by Stefan Cameron on February 11th, 2010
Filed under Designer,Tips
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4 Responses to “Tip: Accessing Form Properties Preview Tab”

  1. Rick Kuhlmann on February 18th, 2010

    I need to know if there is any JavaScript or FormCalc code that I can write that will allow me to access the code entered into an event in the Script Editor.

    I want to access the entered code from another object on the form or from a script object.

    I do not want to modify the code in the original event. I just want to copy all or parts of it.

    Thanks,

    Rick Kuhlmann

  2. Pradeep Goli on February 19th, 2010

    Hi Stefan,

    I would like to know whether we can fill the PDF properties such as Title , Author , Keywords dynamically. Either through scripting or by any other way. I searched Adobe Forums but I couldn’t get any solution, please help me out.

    Actually this question is being raised by one of the SAP Community Network member. I am working on SAP Adobe Forms development.

    Thanks,
    Pradeep Goli

  3. Rick Kuhlmann on February 19th, 2010

    All,

    Please disregard my previous post. I now have the code I require for accessing the code in an event.

  4. Stefan Cameron on February 28th, 2010

    Pradeep Goli,

    You can get/set these properties by using the AcroForm Doc object’s info object property.

    What you set in “File > Form Properties > Info tab” in Designer goes into the info object’s sub-properties.

    You can get access to the Doc object for the current PDF in any XFA event by getting the “event.target” object. From there, you can access the info object and its properties:

    // JavaScript in some event on some field:
var doc = event.target;
console.println(doc.info.Title); // output title to console
doc.info.Title = "New Title"; // set title

    Note that this information cannot be set in Reader, only read. Acrobat, on the other hand, can read and write this information.