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A bit of a Visual Studio 2010 newbie here, but I have developed a modest working knowledge of how to create report forms linked to a database, but I have come across something that I have yet to face.

I have created a report that has three tables on it. Tables 1 (equipment specs) and 2 (operation schedule) are linked to my database. Table 3 is a table (equipment performance audit) that will need to be populated by the people out in the field. They will have to populate these fields in a PDF editor (Adobe) while they are out in the field and simply save them to PDF file. I do not believe there is a plan to have them to be imported back into a database table (which I think we should, but I don't help make those decisions...yet), so we don't need to worry about that.

The problem that I am facing is that I have no idea how to generate the fillable (i.e. text box?) fields for the PDF in Visual Studio, I tried inserting text boxes, but that didn't work...

Any help would be greatly appreciated. Thank you!

Jake
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Have a look at the ITextSharp library. It will allow you to create PDF files on the fly. I'm pretty sure that it is also able to create PDF forms as well.

ITextSharp is a port of the JAVA based IText PDF library. so most of the conceptual information that applies to IText will also apply to ITextsharp

Some code examples to help:
- iTextSharp — few C# examples.
- Generating PDF using ItextSharp with Footer in C#
- Create PDFs in ASP.NET- getting started with iTextSharp
- IText In Action book samples
- Answer to Fill PDF Form with Itextsharp

Community
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Nathan Fisher
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  • I don't have the rights nor the desire to install any additional software on my work computer. I need to know if it is possible with Visual Studio 2010. – Jake Oct 11 '13 at 19:22
  • Yes it is possible, You could go and create a library that will do the same job as ITextsharp. But given that Itextsharp is an opensource library that is used from within visual studio to programatically create/modify PDF documents. It is stable and reliable, and will save you months of coding. It is available as a nuget package :- https://www.nuget.org/packages/itextsharp/ – Nathan Fisher Oct 13 '13 at 22:41