Populating a PDF Form

You can populate fields in a PDF document with data from various sources, including a database, shipping label, or XML.

Set up your variables

1. If your PDF file includes more than one page, create a variable and set its value to the system variable, Page Number. Your PDF document can be any number of pages. This example uses the name ThePage.
2. Create a variable and set its value to the system variable, Full Data File Name. This example uses the name FileName.
3. Create other variables from your data source that you want to add to the PDF file.

Set up the PDF document

1. Create a Load Image rule and set the Use variable field to the variable you defined in Step 2 above, which contains the data file name. To create a Load Image rule, right click the form > Add Rule > Load Image:
2. In the Load Image Action window, set the Default resolution to 300.
3. Click PDF File using the Rule Variable.
4. If your PDF document has more than one page, in the Page area, click Variable, and then select the variable you created in Step 1 of “Set up your variables” above. 
5. Click OK.

Place your variables

Each variable must be set with a Place Text rule. Complete these steps for each occurrence of each variable on each page. You can place the same variable multiple times on multiple pages.

1. Right click the form > Add Rule > Place Text.
2. Name the rule and select the variable to place.
3. In the Place Text Action window, specify the position. You can drag the text to fine position it later.
4. Click Change font and specify the font attributes to use. Click OK.
5. If your PDF file contains multiple pages, set a condition so the variable does not show up on every page. Right click the rule > Add AND condition > Is equal to. Set the page number, and then click OK. The following example shows a condition to show the variable only on page 2:
6. Verify that you see the variables in the correct positions on each page.
7. Save your updated project.