Acrobat Support

Adobe acrobat gives you the ability to create PDF’s that have editable text fields on them. This allows you to create and send a PDF which has some elements that are changeable and some that are not. This kind of thing is perfect for things like printable forms, applications, or in this tutorials case, a band poster.

It’s a smart thing to do for a band to offer a downloadable poster on their website so that venues can download it and use it to promote the shows, or even for fans to print to show their support. We can even take that one step further and make that downloadable poster into editable PDF.

1. Create your poster (using something like Adobe InDesign) leaving the areas you wish to be editable blank. Export the file as a PDF.
   
2. Open the PDF in Adobe Acrobat.
3. Select the Text Field Tool (Tools > Forms > Text Field Tool).
4. Draw a rectangle where you wish the editable area to be.
   
5. You will get a dialog box of Text Field Options. Go through each of these and select the values you find appropriate for the use. In this case, large centered text was the goal, with some default text that hinted at how we hope the venue will use it.
   
6. Save the PDF.
7. Now if you open it in a program like Adobe Reader, you will see that area is editable, just click and type!

Remember that this editable functionality will only be available when opening the PDF inside of Adobe Acrobat or Adobe Reader and not other PDF viewing programs (such as Preview on OS X).