How To Insert A Popup Calendar or Date Picker Into A PDF Fillable Form
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You can add a popup calendar to a Microsoft Word document. You can add a date picker to a Microsoft Excel worksheet. If you format a fillable form field for dates using Adobe Acrobat Professional® you will have an automatic popup Calendar -- but only if the end user is viewing the form with PDF Expert by Readdle on an iPad or iPhone.
You can add a popup calendar to a PDF fillable form -- as long as it is an XFA form created with Adobe LiveCycle Designer®. Unfortunately, there is no built-in tool to add a date picker to the more popular Acroforms, created with Adobe Acrobat Professional or Acrobat Pro DC®. It must be developed with javascript - an extremely complex undertaking.
There are few of these calendars floating around if you know where to look. They are usually designed using one of two methods. The first uses hidden fields next to the date field which are made visible when the activation button is clicked. The problem with this type of calendar is the fields take up a lot of real estate on the form and can interfere with other aspects of form design.
The second method uses a popup dialog -- probably the most complex part of javascript programming for PDF fillable forms. In addition to programming complexity, there are a few other problems with this method as well. One is the size of the buttons. There's a minimum size for dialog buttons so if buttons are used for the days of the month, the calendar ends up being very large. If the buttons that are used to advance the months and years activate a new dialog on top of the old, you can end up with several dialogs stacked on top of each other.
While the end user doesn't notice this, and all dialogs close when a date is eventually selected, having too many dialogs open at once can cause the PDF viewer to crash. We believe we have developed the best popup calendar for Acroforms on the market because it doesn't have any of the aforementioned issues. We have taken it to the next level by automating the insertion process. Professional form builders can now insert a popup calendar anywhere on the PDF fillable form with a couple of mouse clicks and choose from 25 different date formats. In fact, any custom date format can be easily programmed.
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