PDF Form: Reading PDF Form Fields with VBA

Hi there,

This is exactly what I am looking for. Thanks so much.
However, my assignments are a bit different. I am wondering if you can give me a hand.

The data source:
1. An excel spreadsheet storing the raw data
2. A PDF file with an interactive form used to store the data input by the user according to the above excel spreadsheet

My assignments:
1. input the raw data from excel spreadsheet to the PDF interactive form
2. double check if the data input in the PDF interactive form is correct.

I am not allowed to convert the Excel spreadsheet to the PDF file directly as the PDF file is the template with precise paragraphing and wording embedded. It is a heavy job when there are over hundreds of number. I am thinking if the excel VBA can do both assignments automatically or at least double check my input.

Source: http://www.khk.net/wordpress/2010/09/23/reading-pdf-form-fields-with-vba/

Reading PDF Form Fields with VBA

Posted by khk

I’ve written about VBA and Acrobat JavaScript before, and I’ve also mentioned that you can combine VBA and JavaScript to access PDF form fields, but I still owe a sample for that. I had to answer another question today about how to exactly do that, so I whipped up a quick sample program that demonstrates the use of the JavaScript Object (JSO) to read and write AcroForm fields.

We start the same way as in my old VBA sample to create a VBA program that references the Acrobat TLB and to add a button to a document. When we now use the following script as the button handler, we can work with form fields:

Private Sub CommandButton1_Click()
    Dim AcroApp As Acrobat.CAcroApp
    Dim theForm As Acrobat.CAcroPDDoc
    Dim jso As Object
    Dim text1, text2 As String
    
    Set AcroApp = CreateObject("AcroExch.App")
    Set theForm = CreateObject("AcroExch.PDDoc")
    theForm.Open ("C:\temp\sampleForm.pdf")
    Set jso = theForm.GetJSObject
    
    ' get the information from the form fields Text1 and Text2
    text1 = jso.getField("Text1").Value
    text2 = jso.getField("Text2").Value
    
    MsgBox "Values read from PDF: " & text1 & " " & text2

    ' set a text field
    Dim field2 As Object
    Set field2 = jso.getField("Text2")
    
    field2.Value = 13   ' assign the number 13 to the fields value
    
    ' get the information from the form fields Text1 and Text2
    text1 = jso.getField("Text1").Value
    text2 = jso.getField("Text2").Value
    
    MsgBox "Values read from PDF: " & text1 & " " & text2

    theForm.Close
     
    AcroApp.Exit
    Set AcroApp = Nothing
    Set theForm = Nothing
     
    MsgBox "Done"
End Sub

This program requires a PDF file with text fields called “Text1″ and “Text2″ to be stored as C:\temp\sampleForm.pdf. With the explanation in the previous two blog posts, it should not be hard to understand what’s going on here. The only new command introduced is the getField() function, which returns a form field. The form field object has a property “value” which contains the actual value that’s assigned to the field. Give it a try and let me know how it works for you. The updated form field is not saved (because the document does not get saved) – I’ll leave that up to the reader to figure out.

Also, this program will not work with XFA forms (the ones you create in Designer). For those, you need to use the XFA DOM to access the form data. For anybody interested in XFA forms, the LifeCycle Designer ES Scripting Reference is a must read.