Operation Manual

164
USING ACROBAT X STANDARD
Forms
Last updated 10/11/2011
Adjust data content to fit in a barcode field
1 To edit the barcode properties so that it can accommodate more data, double-click the barcode field, and do any of
the following:
• In the Options tab, click the Custom button and enter lower values for Error Correction Level and Y/X Ratio.
• In the Options tab, select Compress Data Before Encoding To Barcode, but only if you are using an Adobe software
decoder (available separately).
• In the Value tab, select Tab Delimited rather than XML as the data-encoding format. XML requires more barcode
area to encode information than Tab Delimited does.
• In the Options tab, select a different Symbology option.
• In the Value tab, click the Pick button, and deselect any fields that don’t need encoding. For example, don’t include
fields with redundant information.
• In the Value tab, enter a custom script that converts user-entered text to either all lowercase or all uppercase
characters during the encoding process.
Note: The National Association of Computerized Tax Processors (NACTP) guidelines, used by the United States Internal
Revenue Service and state tax agencies, recommend using all uppercase characters for 2D barcode data.
2 To minimize the amount of barcode area for containing the data, double-click the barcode field, and in the Value
tab, write a custom script that restricts data to alphanumeric characters and to a single case. (Text that is either all
uppercase or all lowercase requires less barcode area than the same text written in a mixture of uppercase and
lowercase characters.)
Consider creating additional barcode fields in the form and mapping different data to each barcode field.
Set form field navigation
If a PDF document doesn’t have a specified tab order, the default tabbing order is based on the document structure
unless the user has deselected the Tab Order option in the Accessibility preferences.
You can change the tabbing order after you create the fields. If you are in form editing mode, you can order the tabs
by document structure (default), row, or column. You can also choose the order manually by dragging and dropping
fields in the Fields panel. If you are not in the editing mode, you can change the page properties to order the tabs by
row or column. However, you can’t customize the tab order manually.
More Help topics
“Create forms using Acrobat” on page 155
“Make Adobe PDF forms accessible” on page 257
Set tabbing order in edit mode
1 If you are not in form editing mode, choose Tools > Forms > Edit. The Forms task pane opens.
2 In the Fields panel on the right, make sure that you have selected Sort By > Tab Order.
3 (Optional) To view the tabbing order for the fields, choose Forms > Tasks > Other Tasks > Edit Fields > Show Tab
Numbers.
4 Select a Tab Order option:
Order Tabs By Structure Tabs based on the document structure, and follows the order that is set up in the tagging.
Order Tabs By Row Tabs from the upper-left field, moving first left to right and then down, one row at a time.