Best way to distribute form that can be printed or saved?
- by Jason Antman
I need to develop a simple form (intended only for printing) to be filled in by arbitrary end users (i.e. no specialized software). Ideally, I'd like the end-user to be able to save their inputs to the form and update it periodically. It seems that (at least without LiveCycle Enterprise Suite) Adobe Reader won't save data input in a PDF form. Aside from just distributing the form as a Word document, does anyone have any suggestions?
Background:
I do some work for a volunteer ambulance corps. They have a lot of elderly patients who don't know (or can't remember) their medical history. They want to develop a common form with personal information (name, address, DOB, medications list, etc.) for elderly residents to hang on their refrigerators (apparently a common solution to this problem). As some of them (or their children/grandchildren) are computer literate, it would make most sense to provide a download-able blank form that can be filled in, saved, updated, and re-printed as needed. Due to worries about privacy, HIPAA, etc. anything with server-side generation is out, it needs to be 100% client-side, and in a format that the majority of non-technical computer users can access without additional software.
Thanks for any tips... at this point, I'm leaning towards just using a .doc form.
