Create PDF Forms with OpenOffice

Emm.. it has been a long long time since I last posted so I guess most of my readers has left this site already :P So have to write something to pull them back.

Well, the title says it all. Did you know that you can actually create PDF forms, the ones with interactive fields that your users can fill in Adobe Reader (but cannot save), with OpenOffice?

The fact is I have been looking for a cheap, or free solution (Adobe Acrobat is costly, my friend). I didn't expect it to be so near. All the while I know you can create PDFs with OpenOffice but never thought that you can create fillable PDFs with it. So, in my quest for the cheap solution I found out that Adobe actually opens up the specifications of the PDF format online for free. While reading through the specs I was wondering why nobody has ever made something for it. And it suddenly got into my mind, would OpenOffice have already supported this?

And YES!

Here is how you do it. Not something difficult but I think OpenOffice should advertise on it more :)

Hope this helps.

Enjoy!