Exporting from Filemaker and Importing to PDF form

[charliecharles75]

Hi

Having major issue working out a solution to the following issue. I have a customer base of let's say 1,000 customers, I need to export their data and supply them with a merged pdf form for them to check, alter and return. From what I can see it is easy to import one record into Acrobat (always first record) but there is no way to create individual pdf files for each customer. Does anybody have any ideas of either FM plugins or PDF plugins that would do the job?

It is worth noting that there appears to be a windows based plugin for Acrobat called Automailmerge that would do the job perfectly but as I am on Mac it is of no use to me.

Any ideas/help/guidance much appreciated.

[jamesducker]

I don't really like PDF forms to be honest although I'm sure there are tools that would do the job.

If you are in a hurry I would recommend using IWP.

Replicate your Acrobat form in a FileMaker layout, put the fields on it, publish database using IWP.

Customer logs in to IWP, sees their record and updates straight in to your database. No PDFs, no importing, no exporting etc.

You'd need to be mindful of security of course. The basics would be to make sure IWP users have a VERY limited privilege set. Also create a little "login" sequence i.e. a layout allowing the customer to enter a username and a password in to global fields, then a script which verifies those against the customers table then takes them to the data update layout and finds their record for them to update. Needless to say, if the data is in any way sensitive then TEST TEST TEST before you send out a link -)

James

[charliecharles75]

Thanks James, I appreciate the feedback and yes this would be the way to go, however the client is preferring of the Acrobat form for their own reasons despite my attempt to steer them away from this so I have to investigate to see my original post is possible. If it is an impossibility then I will have to mail a form that has no merge data on it.

Appreciate any other help/advice.

Thanks again.

[comment]

I haven't used it myself, but the description seems to fit:

http://www.productivecomputing.com/plugins/pdf-manipulator-id-29/