After some further experimentation I discovered that the FDF text files that
store the data for the PDF files can be pretty easily created in VBA using
data stored in Access tables. Each FDF has a standard header and a standard
footer that can be stored in memo fields. Each field in the PDF form can be
stored in a column in the table, along with a corresponding field number
that can be determined from the PDF after doing a manual export to a FDF
file. There appear to be only two types of fields - checkboxes and text
fields. Checkboxes are either Off for not checked or Yes for checked, and
surrounded with special characters like:
<< /V /Yes /T (c2-15)>>
Text field contents are stored surrounded by parentheses along with some
special characters, like:
<< /V (Houston) /T (f1-8)>>
The standard footer contains the PDF file name, along with two unique
alpha-numeric identifiers enclosed within greater than/less than symbols.
The first unique identier appears to identify the exact PDF file and is
constant, and the second appears to relate to a session using this PDF since
it varies each time. The second one should be nulled out to avoid getting
an error message:
/F (MyPDF.pdf)/ID [ <10ca32c604330f0c10901cf1e05af81><>
Some sample code to create the FDF text file using data stored in a table:
dim db as database
set db = currentdb
dim rst as recordset
dim fs as object
dim A as object
set rst = db.openrecordset("qryTestFDF", dbopendynaset)
rst.movefirst
set fs = CreateObject("Scripting.FileSystemObject")
set A = fs.CreateTextFile("c:\myPDFs\test.fdf", True)
A.writeline (rst!header)
(use a loop to fill all the data fields - the order doesn't seem to matter)
A.writeline (rst!firstfield)
A.writeline (rst!secondfield)
etc.
(end of loop for each field in the form)
A.writeline (rst!footer)
A.close
rst.close
set db = nothing
set rst = nothing
set fs = nothing
set A = nothing
The resulting FDF text file can be imported into the PDF and will fill all
the fields.
Hope this is helpful.
Bill
