Here's a tip if you end up considering the option of converting your Word
form to HTML. To remove those nasty Office-specific tags, you can download
this HTML clean-up:
http://office.microsoft.com/downloads/2000/Msohtmf2.aspx
Yes, you'll still have a little clean-up because it's still abusing CSS
somewhat, but it makes the HTML much more palatable.
Of course, if you have Acrobat I'd go with Susan's suggestion about the PDF.
Question for Susan: I attempted to do just what you suggested (created an
Acrobat form containing a button with the action to submit to a CF page as
well as to print). I ended up giving up on the idea because its behavior
seemed too erratic. I had to add security so no one could copy or alter the
text (legal mumbo jumbo) and with the form secured I could press the submit
button all day and nothing was going to happen (though it would still
print). If I took off the security, it would sometimes submit but mostly
just print. If I took off the print option, it would submit but it wouldn't
e-mail the contents as I'd set it up with <CFMAIL> (same way I've done a
million times with HTML forms), and probably related to that was the problem
that it would choke if the person didn't include an e-mail address (though
it was not a required field and no other field had that problem). Also,
when my CF page appeared upon submit, my address bar displayed a path on the
c:\ drive (probably to Acrobat Reader) so I don't know if that will cause
end user confusion or not. I gave up, thinking this is too crazy, but I'll
persevere if you say PDF submissions do in fact work with CF. (I'm not even
going to TRY populating the PDF form from the database!!!).
Oh, and thanks everybody for your great answers to my question yesterday
(just got them on Digest).
Shannon Rhodes
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
<SNIP>
Date: Wed, 01 Aug 2001 15:13:26 -0500
From: "Susan Allen" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
I've done a lot of converting Word docs to .pdf and building the form
functionality into the .pdf. You can add a button (and code it NOT to show
on the form if it is printed) that will call a .cfm and do whatever: write
to the database, etc. You can also fill the .pdf form automatically from a
database. Is that too clungy for you? I've used it very successfully for
an app that required a lot of mathematical calculations based on a few
inputs; the .pdf does all the math, and then the results are written to the
db. It takes some time to get the form the way you want, but it looks like
the users' "paper" they were used to, and you can build a good deal of
functionality into it via java.
-----Original Message-----
From: Tangorre, Mike [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]]
Sent: Wednesday, August 01, 2001 10:31 AM
Well you could save the word doc as HTML, then open the document up and add
the HTML for the fields. BE WARNED, Microsoft HTML is nasty to work in...
all kinds of crazy things going on.
-----Original Message-----
From: Braver, Ben [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]]
Sent: Wednesday, August 01, 2001 1:06 PM
But I'm being asked to convert an existing "paper-style" MS Word document to
a web form where info can be captured and emailed.
My question is: is there a way to "overlay" form elements onto an existing
doc saved as HTML without doing the form over from scratch?
Thanks.
</SNIP>
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