Fillable PDF

Emily Alloy

I also have a similar question.. I have a form in Smartsheet that I use to collect data from 600+ teams. I've leveraged the document builder to transfer the data in the sheet, collected through the form, into a PDF.

It's been a year since I sent out the initial form and I would like to send out the PDF to each form owner and have them update their information in the document. I want to leverage this approach for the update instead of the Smartsheet update request since the full questions/help text from the original form won't display in an update request (only the column header).

Question: If I email out the fillable PDF to each document owner and have them enter their updates and resubmit, can I link the fillable data back into the relevant/linked cell in my Smartsheet?

LYGSTEVEN75091

how to upload a fillable PDF

Andrée Starå

Hi Steven,

@LYGSTEVEN75091

You'll have to set up the PDF with form fields first. I use Acrobat Pro because I found it to work best.

More info.

https://help.smartsheet.com/learning-track/smartsheet-advanced/document-builder

Did that work/help?

I hope that helps!

Have a fantastic week & Happy Holidays!

Best,

Andrée Starå | Workflow Consultant / CEO @ WORK BOLD

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Angelo C.

Did anyone find a solution re collecting info on a fillable PDF that then feeds the details into a smartsheet?

TheKSP.org

@Andrée Starå

I am having same request as @Angelo C. of pulling data from fillable PDF into smartsheet.

Any lead would be greatly appreiciated!

Josh Reed

Andree,

To revisit Susan's inquiry I am curious if you've come across any solution for this... What I would like to do is create a fillable pdf to use in place of a form to fill out row data on a given sheet. Forms don't currently have a way to limit character entry in text fields and other small things. PDFs give you a lot more control. My hope was that since PDF fields can be mapped directly to columns in a sheet that information could flow bidirectionally, but that does not seem to be the case. Am I correct in this thinking?

I was considering sending the pdf to clients.. then exporting their answers to excel and then using datashuttle... but at that point using workarounds on Forms is better. Right now I just send an update request to the submitter's email if the entry is exceeding 100 characters. If they resubmit and are still over 100 then they get another update request until the requirement is satisfied. On the form itself I put a default message saying this sentence is exactly 100 chars for reference (or something). These are fine solutions but not as professional as a customized fillable pdf that SS can extract information directly from....

Another advantage to this idea is that my customers can have copies of this PDF and fill it in to update project info as well. They just email another PDF and I can update the current one to a new version in the appropriate row, and then like a cross sheet reference the sheet will look at the new version and copy/overwrite data from the mapped fields to their corresponding columns.

Does this make sense?

Thank you for your time,

Josh

Josh Reed

Sorry, one other benefit is the PDF could be structured completely different than a Form, like you could build it as a process flow and employees can fill out important info used on helper sheets for backend info. Instead of having them log in to a tracker or something and entering data into cells, they could keep the PDF handy and fill it out as they go, submit the pdf, I attach it to a new row on the helper sheet and the data autofills based on the preset mappings. Just a way to simplify data entry. Again, Forms already do that, I'm just suggesting rather than continue to beef up forms you could take advantage of all the robustness of Adobe PDFs.