Adobe ACROBAT 9 HOW-TOS Manual page 256

Organizational aspects. In Form Edit mode, the fields added to your
form are shown in the Fields pane sorted by their tab order. In forms con-
taining dozens or hundreds of fields, it's often easier to locate a group of
fields you want to change by ordering them alphabetically. To do so, click
Sort in the Fields pane and choose Alphabetic Order.
Many complex forms, such as human resources, financial, or engineer-
ing forms, contain numbered fields, which are also ordered sequentially
when you use the Alphabetic Order option. Read about examples of
numbered fields in #116, "Building a Batch of Buttons, " and in the sidebar
"Duplicating Buttons, " also in #116.
Functional aspects. It's common knowledge that you can press the
Tab key to move through a form from field to field. This sequence, called
tab order, can be modified in the Fields pane if you have selected the Tab
Sort option.
There are several ways to adjust tab order:
•
The Default Tab Order option is chosen by default, and is assigned to
your form when Acrobat defines the form fields.
•
Order Tabs By Row is commonly used for forms that collect hundreds
of pieces of data. Tabbing in rows allows the user to tab across from left
to right.
•
Order Tabs By Column is commonly used when you are assembling
data for comparison. For example, a form lists sale quantities of differ-
ent items (values added in rows) according to a particular salesperson
(defined by column).
•
Choose Order Tabs Manually if you want to redefine the order yourself.
Drag a field's label in the Fields pane up or down to change its order.
You may need to order fields manually when you are dealing with cal-
culated fields.
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#90: Organizing and Ordering a Form
245
Making Form Fields
More Visible
It can be difficult to visual-
ize form fields on a stylized
form if they aren't colored
or identified in some way.
Fortunately, Acrobat offers
preferences to set form field
visibility.
In a distributed form, your
users can toggle the Show
Highlight check box on the
Document Message Bar to
show or hide the highlight
colors, or show a border
when the mouse passes over
a field, with or without high-
lighting the form fields:
1. Choose Edit > Prefer-
ences > Forms (Acrobat >
Preferences > Forms).
2. Click the "Show border
hover color for fields" if
you want to show a bor-
der around a field as you
pass the mouse over its
location on the page.
3. Click the "Fields high-
light color" color swatch
to choose a custom
color when you have the
"Highlight fields" option
selected on the form's
Document Message Bar.
4. Click OK to close the Pref-
erences dialog.
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From the Library of Daniel Dadian