I have Acrobat9 Pro on trial. All I want to do is create an order form that my customers can put onto their desktops. When they want to make an order the idea is that they will launch/open the form with Adobe Reader, fill it in and by using a submit button email it back to me.
Is this possible? I have created a form, emailed it as an attachment to a client, they can fill it in but when they submit it they get a message saing that submission is not allowed.
Please forgive me if this level of question is not appropriate for this forum and if there is a more suitable forum please let me know.

Email is fraught with many problems, and is probably not a viable
solution.

If you have an HTML form on your web site, you need a web script (e.g.
ASP, CGI, PHP). The same for PDF forms.

Does your order form include a credit card field?

Aandi Inston

Thanks for the reply Aandi. At the moment I don't have a web site and so that route isn't open to me.
The form I've created is very simple and requests only very basic name and address information - there are no credit card details or anything else that may be regarded as sensitive.
When I fill in the form and submit it it sends an email to my account successfully. I only encounter a problem from this first clients PC. Maybe its to do with their email settings - any ideas?

The email issue with the client is exactly what the mailto feature is a bad idea. Using mailto for HTML forms has also been a problem for many years and web submission is generally recommended. The mailto link in Acrobat and Reader require the user machine to have an active MAPI client. That is an option and the basic source of many of the problems.

If your form is simple, you may find that a formmail or cgimail may be available from your ISP provider. If so, then you can follow the directions for setting up the form for that type of use (requires a bunch of hidden fields so that the formmail cgi knows what to do with the form). For this form of submission, you would use the HTML form option in the form submit button. These options simply receive your form field information, formats it in something like "fieldname: data" for each field, adds some optional data if you request, and sends it to you based on the hidden email field. I would not recommend it if you are trying to upload files or anything, but for basic text it works pretty well.

Thanks for the replies.

Could you please describe how I can check for an active MAPI client and what value I would have to specify?

I'm not sure if I understand about formmail or cgimail as I don't have an ISP. Is there something I could Google to start investigating?

All I wanted to achieve was a simple way for my client to email me when they had an instruction / order for me to carry out. An email proforma if you like. (I use Outlook and haven't found a way to create an email proforma.)The data is very simple and would be OK just as a text stream. The receipt of an email as a notification for me to do some work is more important.

It's a pity that this functionality, which is part of the Acrobat advertising and is why I got the product on trial, just doesn't seem to work. The form that I created looked good and was easy to fill in etc but if my client can't easily save it and send it to me then its pointless. I'm really quite disappointed with Acrobat and so doubt very much that I will be purchasing the product.

Of course if there are any ideas or advice out there that enable me to salvage the situation then I will be very grateful and will give it a try.

I think you will find, when many of your customers can't email, or
find that what they think they sent has not been received, that this
is less viable than you think.

But anyway, I guess you are trying to have a PDF emailed. Reader can't
normally do that. Best to email the form data only.

Aandi Inston

It doesn't sound as if you have granted any Reader Extension rights,
which certainly then means Reader can't save the form.

Aandi Inston

Thanks very much for your replies. The 'enable usage rights in Adobe Reader' seems to have fixed all the problems I have been encountering, including and especially the email. When searching the documentation I was focusing on the email problems and this didn't, for me, connect 'usage rights' with email. Anyway as with everything its easy once you know how. Once again thank you, particularly George, for your help. I trust the rest of my testing will be trouble free!