Submitting Forms via Email

Question

I have created an order form in LiveCycle that i wish to post on my website. I want my customers to be able to open the form directly from the site, fill it in, click submit, and for their form to be emailed directly back to me. I have tried a couple of different forms, however, when the customers click the submit button, nothing is ever sent, it will only ever try to save the document elsewhere, and this is not practical for my customers. I am convinced that i have set the form up correctly, and distributed it correctly in Adobe Acrobat, but it still does not work.
Any help would be highly appreciated!!
CraigM

Answer 1

Unfortunately, I think that the only data structure you can get with Designer is XML. If you recast the form in Acrobat (form tools are under the TOOLS menu, not the FORMS menu (this one takes you to Designer), you should be able to select HTML as an output data format. The only reason that would be important is if you collected the data in cgimail or formmail. An example of HTML for a web form is given at "http://www.computing.vt.edu/internet_and_web/web_publishing/webmasters_toolkit/web_form_ma iler/quickstart.html". Yes, this is HTML, but you can do the same thing by including the hidden fields in a PDF form and submitting to the formmail server. You can not use this one as it only works for folks at VT, but it provides an example. You can check with your ISP provider to see if there is such a form service available to you.
As sample form return from a HTML submit is as follows (from a different server than the VT.EDU one above):
=======================================================
Below is the result of your feedback form.  It was submitted by
([email protected]) on Thursday, July 29, 2004 at 21:31:37
http://www.server???.net/ordsubmit.html
Order:
Name:    Home C. Name
Address:    555 5th St
City:    Anywhere, State  99999
Phone:    (xxx) yyy-yyyy
E-Mail:    [email protected]
Subject:    Order Request
Payment:    Credit
Comment:
Order Items:
#    Code    Color    Size    Quantity    Cost    Item
0    1311    white    king    5    35.00    Big_Foot_athletic_socks
1    401    white    6X    3    42.00    Players_two-pack_briefs
SubTotal:        77.00
Tax:        3.47
Shipping:        8.00
Total:        88.47
=======================================================
If this suffices, then submitting your form as HTML data with the hidden fields will do the job.
If that is not adequate, then at least just submit the data to you by e-mail (that will do for 80-90% of the time) while you work out how to submit to a web server. The XML or FDF files can be imported to the form file, giving you the same result as if the full form had been sent (and no extended rights are needed). With a little programming skill, or with the form, you can insert the data from the form to a database file (sorry, I have not done it, just know you can).
I suggest you try to work things out in steps until you reach the final solution needed. Bill