Chapter 19. Working with PDF Form

Every April 14 users throughout the United States venture to Adobe's Web site to download the Adobe Reader software. The day before U.S. income taxes are due, users are acquiring Adobe Reader because all U.S. Internal Revenue Service (IRS) tax forms are PDF documents.

Perhaps one of the most frequent uses of Adobe Reader is for filling out Adobe PDF forms. But unless PDF forms carry special usage rights, you can't save the form data after you complete a form. These forms are designed for filling in data fields and printing the form or sending the data back to the initiator. If you return to the form after closing it, you'll see that all data are lost. You'll need to fill in the data fields again and reprint the form.

When PDF forms include usage rights added with the Adobe LiveCycle Reader Extensions Server, filled-in forms can be saved in Adobe Reader. If you download any IRS form developed after October 25, 2004, you can fill in the form and save the form with the data intact.

When you click a link in the scroll box of forms on the IRS site, the form is listed with a hyperlink to the PDF document. Click the link and the form opens in an inline view in your default Web browser. Save the form from your Web browser, and you can open it directly in Adobe Reader.