Return Acrobat form to... not the sender

As the forms creator and expert you may find yourself in a situation where you're distributing the form on behalf of someone else. That's fine, but you don't want the responses coming back to you, you want them to be sent to the other person. What can you do?

It's possible to have the responses sent to someone else, but it will only work if you collect responses via email or distribute an email attachment (not a link) using your internal server. If you want to use Acrobat.com then have the person who should receive the responses distribute the form.

Change your identity
OK, those of you with fantasies of being a spy take a moment.. and now come back to reality. We're talking about your Acrobat identity. This is where your name, and more importantly, your email address live. In order for your form to be returned to someone else you will need to put their information in the Identity dialog box. To do that, go to the Acrobat Preferences:
Edit > Preferences (Windows) or Acrobat > Preferences (Mac OS). From the list on the left, click on Identity. Type the name and email address of the person who should receive the responses. Click OK.

Distribute the form
Now you're ready to distribute your form. To do this, choose Forms > Distribute Form. Select either the option to Manually collect responses in my email inbox or Automatically collect responses on my internal server. Remember, if you choose to collect on a server you must select the option to send the form as an attachment to an email message (not a link.)

Receive responses
There's one more thing you should know about this workaround... the responses will be looking for a file named [formname]_responses.pdf that was automatically created in the same folder that the original form file is in. That means on your computer, not the designated recipient's. So you want to let the recipient know that when the first response comes back they should choose the option to create a new responses file. After the first response they should be fine.

Resume your identy
It's tough being a spy... Who am I today? What city is this? Remember to go back to Preferences > Identity and restore your name and email address to the appropriate persona.

Patti's Posts

I held out as long as I could, but in the end it seems I will need to blog. So look here for the occasional post about Acrobat, or the Creative Suite applications (Photoshop, Illustrator, InDesign, Flash).