Can acroforms be copied into an interactive LC form?

Question

Hi all,
I created a flowed form in LC ES2 for our area that opens new accounts recently and it is also my first exposure to LC so my knowledge base is very limited thus far.
Upper management has decided that instead of simply making the current "forms" (word, excel and some PDF files) interactive PDF's, they want to incorposrate all of the various forms into a single interactive form.
In my mind this is a huge task given that there are over 40 different types of accounts which have anywhere from 10-20 other documents needing completion. I've suggested beginning this task with a top 5 or top 10 most frequently opened account types but even that seems daunting to me.
What I have to work with is LC ES2 and Acrobat Pro X. From what I've experienced what seems to work best is to first create PDF's of the word/excel files using Acrobat, then import into LC if I want to create new interactive forms.
What I tried but have failed to do now is to copy a current PDF (acroform) into a new page/subform into my original flowed form. Ex. I have a generic disclosure document (4 pages) that was a word doc, I created a pdf fom acrobat, then attempted to copy and paste that form into a blank subform I added to the flowed form. I got an error indicating there was not enough space. I was hoping the subform paste would expand to fit whatever I was pasting in but that is not what I'm seeing.
Can this be done? If not, any suggestions on how to accomplish this task?
As a general estimate, I'd say I've been tasked to add nearly 50-75 separate pdf forms to this original then dynamically hide/show/prefill certain pages based on account type selections, etc.
I really hope there is some way to copy/import these rather than have to recreate each from scratch. Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated!

Answer 1

You won't be able to do it and have a proper dynamic form. You would be able to import the pdfs as artwork and lay fields on top but wouldn't have any flow. If you want to just show and hide static pages then importing PDF artwork would probably work ok.
The best procedure I've found is to recreate forms in Designer from scratch if you want a truly dynamic form. Importing from Word creates a big mess, I tried it a couple of times and moved on. Importing from Acrobat can work but again I find recreating from scratch a better way to go.
What I tried but have failed to do now is to copy a current PDF (acroform) into a new page/subform into my original flowed form. Ex. I have a generic disclosure document (4 pages) that was a word doc, I created a pdf fom acrobat, then attempted to copy and paste that form into a blank subform I added to the flowed form. I got an error indicating there was not enough space. I was hoping the subform paste would expand to fit whatever I was pasting in but that is not what I'm seeing.
PDFs either have to be opened by Designer first or placed as background artwork you can't copy and paste them in.
In my mind this is a huge task given that there are over 40 different types of accounts which have anywhere from 10-20 other documents needing completion. I've suggested beginning this task with a top 5 or top 10 most frequently opened account types but even that seems daunting to me.
I think you would go mad trying to get it all working. Forms, when they get quite large, can take a performance hit as well. Much better off grouping by similar function, etc. If you flowcharted the whole thing out you might get it working but it would be an arduous task.
We tried doing a large form that was tying to integrate forms from several government ministries and departments and we got it mostly working but it ended up being very difficult to work on. Also the clients didn't really seem to know what they wanted which didn't help.
We have successfully combined 3 or 4 forms into one and it works well for specific applications. But again, built from scratch.
Other people may have had success with this kind of thing but not us.