Learning Claris FileMaker

Portable Document Format (PDF) files are everywhere.

The PDF file format was created by Adobe as a file format for the print industry to exchange documents that would preserve the author’s intended formatting.

With PDF, it didn’t matter if a file was created with a font that isn’t on your computer or linked images were missing, because the font and images would be embedded with the file.

It doesn’t matter if the file was created with Microsoft Word or InDesign or even on a Mac or a Windows computer.

Once exported to PDF, the file would look and print the same across platforms.

In addition to the free Adobe Acrobat Reader, there are a number of free and paid apps that work with the open PDF file format standard.

One we like a lot for macOS is Smile Software’s PDFpen.

PDF also became the de facto replacement for paper forms. While having users/customers fill out a form to collect information is probably better handled with a web form that syncs to your database, some industries still rely on formatted forms. It could be legal reasons or just because they don’t have the desire or resources to convert old processes to a completely digital workflow.

So what do you do if you have data that you need to take data from your FileMaker database and use it to fill out PDF forms?