Citation info with the Acrobat form tool

Adding citations with the form tool in Acrobat 4.0

Howdy. Here are the simple steps that you might want to do if you were to add simple bibliographic information to an article using the Forms tool in Acrobat 4.0. The steps are the same, but the basic Acrobat toolbar was a little different in 3.0. There are a thousand ways you can vary this setup, because you can have different background colors or different text colors, or font sizes, or borders . . . you get the idea. So I'll just put down the basics and you can try a few different color combinations to see what works for you. By the way, I only do this citation info if I'm putting a chapter or article on e-reserve that does not have the citation info on the page already - many articles will have this info printed on the first page of each article.

Open a document in Acrobat 4.0.
Click on the forms tool on the left hand side. It is the third from the bottom.
You'll get a little cross-hairs - draw a box where you'd like the citation information to go. You can resize this box later, so don't worry about being extra exact.
You get the field properties box. If this is what you got, congrats!

You need to type something in the 'field name' box, but it doesn't matter what you type in there. I usually just put in 'a' because on most of these type of documents, you'll only have one field to play with.
Select 'Text' as the field type.
You can leave 'short description' blank - this is what comes up as you mouse over a field, so you could type in 'citation information' but it's not necessary.
Click the Appearances tab. This is where you can make choices about what your field will look like. If you want a border, select Border and tell it what color you want by clicking on the little square next to it.. If you want a background color, repeat the process. I usually provide a border color, like blue or something, so that it stands out a little online, but of course it will print black. I usually don't provide a background color. If you choose to have a border, you get other options: the width or style of your line. Make those choices if you'd like.
Note: all of these choices will remain for the next time you do a form field, so you only have to do this part one time, for your first field. Also, if you make some choices and you don't like them, there is a quick way to change them.
For text, choose a color, and a font.This is the color and font that will appear on screen. For the same reason that I usually choose a border color, I usually choose a font color.
For size, I usually choose Auto. This will make the text fit inside your box, rather than appearing too big or too small.
For common properties, I leave the two boxes unchecked and make the form field Visible. The form field with citation info will print when you choose Visible, but if you'd like, another option in that pull down menu is 'Visible but doesn't print.'
Congrats! You've set up your properties. You won't have to do this a second time, unless you want to change the way things look.

Now for the Citation information - this is what you'll have to do each time you want to add information.

2. Choose Alignment Left (this will start your citatation on the left side of the form box that you're creating) and click on the Multi-line box (this will allow your citation to wrap around and be more than one line long). These will remain your defaults until you change them, just like the Appearances that you have chosen.

3. Once you have done this one time, this will be the place that you'll start doing your citation field - when you click on the Forms tool on the toolbar, you'll open up to this screen. All you'll have to do is name your field ('a' in this example) and then . . .

4. Start typing your citation info in the box marked Default. You can type it in any way you'd like - there are no rules here.

5. Once you've finished, click OK. You'll see your form field outlined in red, with the name that you've given it in the middle of the form.

In order to see how it looks on your document, click on Acrobat's hand tool. In order to resize your form, click on the form tool, grab the handles, click and drag. In order to go back and change something, you must be looking at the form field outlined in red like this. Either right click on the form field and choose Properties or double-click on the field to bring up your Field Properties options.

And now you're done - just save the file (using the Save As command in Acrobat 4.0 to optimize the file) and do what ever you'd like to do with the document. There are a thousand things you can do with the form field, but that is another topic for another time! If you have any questions on this, feel free to email me at any time.