Using Acrobat vs. LiveCycle Designer (Windows)

Adobe LiveCycle Designer is included with Adobe Acrobat Professional for Windows. LiveCycle Designer enhances the form-creation features in Acrobat and offers a robust collection of advanced features and controls.

Note: Acrobat users on Mac OS can create and edit forms in Acrobat only if those forms haven’t been opened and saved on Windows in LiveCycle Designer. Of course, Acrobat and Adobe Reader users on Mac OS can open and fill in any PDF form, regardless of whether it was created on Windows or Mac OS, or which program was used to save it.
Similarities

Use either Acrobat or LiveCycle Designer to do any of the following:



  • Use a paper document scanned to PDF as the basis of a form.

  • Convert an existing electronic document to PDF, to be the basis of a form.

  • Run automatic form-field recognition on existing PDFs and documents converted to PDF.

  • Edit PDF forms created in Acrobat.

  • Create forms to distribute by email or post on a website for people to download onto their computers for completing in Acrobat or Reader or for printing and completing by hand.

  • Create forms that users can complete in Acrobat or Reader and submit through email.

Differences

Acrobat and LiveCycle Designer differ in these ways:



  • In LiveCycle Designer, you can start with one of the blank, built-in templates—predesigned layouts that you edit and customize.

  • In LiveCycle Designer, you can design your own forms, starting with a blank page. This capability isn’t available in Acrobat.

  • You must use LiveCycle Designer to edit any forms that have been opened and saved in LiveCycle Designer, even if the form was originally created in Acrobat.

  • In LiveCycle Designer, you can extend compatibility back as far as Acrobat 6.0 and Reader 6.0 for most form data fields. In Acrobat, you can extend compatibility as far as Acrobat 4.0 and Reader 4.0.

  • LiveCycle Designer can create forms in formats that it can convert into HTML. This ability makes LiveCycle Designer the better application to use if you intend to post the interactive form on a website for people to fill in and submit from within a browser. You can also integrate PDF forms into existing workflows by binding forms to XML schemas, XML sample data files, databases, and web services.

  • With LiveCycle Designer, you can use scripting objects, integrate a form with a data source, and create dynamic forms.

Note: You can start LiveCycle Designer from the Windows Start menu, or from within Acrobat Professional, either by choosing Forms > Create New Form and following the wizard for creating a new form or by selecting a Forms task in the Getting Started window.