Text Field: Allows the user to type in text, such as name, address, or phone number.
Check Box: Presents yes-or-no choices for individual items. If the form contains multiple check boxes, the user can typically select as many or few of these as needed.
Radio Button: Presents a group of choices from which the user can select only one item from the group. All radio buttons with the same name work together as a group.
List Box: Displays a list of options the user can select. List boxes have a field property that lets the user Shift-click or Control-click to select multiple items on the list.
Combo Box: Allows the user either choose an item from a pop-up menu or type in a value.
Button: Initiates a change on the user’s computer, such as opening a file, playing a sound, or submitting data to a web server. These buttons can be customized with images, text, and visual changes triggered by mouse actions. Action buttons are different from radio buttons, which represent data choices made by the user.
Digital Signature Field: Allows the user to electronically sign a PDF document with a digital signature.
Barcode: Encodes the input form selected fields and displays it as a visual pattern that can be interpreted by decoding software or hardware (available separately).

Learn how to create an interactive PDF that people would actually love to read!

The Prepare Form Wizard in Adobe Acrobat Pro DC can be used to create interactive forms from an existing electronic document (for example a Word, PDF, or Excel document) or from a paper form that was placed in a scanner with the resulting image opened in Acrobat. Check out the latest examples of 3D PDFs developed with Tetra 4D. Our 3D PDF samples include aerospace, manufacturing, oil & gas, industrial, and more. 5) Now it’s time to export this document to a PDF. Go File Export and set the Format as Adobe PDF (Interactive) and hit save. Then on the next Export to Interactive PDF window hit OK. There you go, you’ve created an interactive and animated PDF. Open up the file in Adobe Reader to see the results. Moreover, your digital content can be interactive and animated, with links, slideshows, videos and audio embedded. For example, you can insert YouTube video into book page and make your content more interesting and engaging. A video or audio is worth a thousand words, making a eBook with video and audio has never been so easy.

It’s hard to imagine your work life without PDFs. Whether you want to create a marketing brochure, portfolio, sales collateral, user manual, white paper, ebook, etc. the majority of these documents are displayed in a PDF format.

PDFs have been an integral part of our online experience since the inception of the commercial internet in the 1990s.

However, therein lies the problem. Given how important they are, they haven’t evolved a bit since the 90s. They are still these ancient documents with static images and text blocks. In a 2020 world of smartphones and GIFs, these boring old PDFs just don’t cut it anymore!

Table of Content

What does an interactive PDF mean?

An interactive PDF has added functionalities to make it look like it belongs in today’s digital age and not on your dad’s old desktop.

Animated Pdf Examples Pdf

An interactive PDF is the one that allows you to incorporate all sorts of digitally rich media into a document like visual weblinks, videos, audio, GIFs, files, and other documents inside a PDF.

Text and images are mere basics of what we are used to seeing in a document. Your typical document editor or PDF creators only allow a certain level of visual appeal.

However, interactive PDFs are much more than just a bunch of images in a document. How about adding videos, podcasts, spreadsheets, files, or even GIFs to your PDF?! Don’t know about you, but we sure as heck want to read that PDF!

Read more: Create An Interactive Ebook The Easiest Way

Why PDFs Need an Update?

Although PDFs have been an integral part of day-to-day business activities, they haven’t evolved much over time. They are filled with small texts, and images and that’s it. In today’s digital world, people expect more from the content they are consuming.

They simply aren’t going to devote enough time to downloading and reading a dull piece of information when they are constantly being lured towards more interesting and interactive content online.

Your ebook, white paper, or sales brochure needs to be of the same quality and appeal as the web content we consume. It should be interactive, eye-catching, visually appealing, and fun! Being informative alone will not cut through all the noise.

Marketers have realized this shift and are gradually moving from a static to a more dynamic form of marketing. Here is some proof of that interesting trend:

89% of current marketers are focused on creating more high-quality and engaging content over the next 12 months.
81% of marketers believe that interactive content catches the reader’s attention.
70% of marketers say that interactive content is effective at converting site visitors.
88% of marketers said that interactive content is effective in differentiating their brand from their competitors.
93% of marketers agreed that interactive content is effective in educating its buyers.

Interactive PDFs keep your audience engaged and since not many people know how to create one, you are in a great position to make some waves and impress your customers, team, manager, instructor, etc.

We have come to expect a certain level of interactivity built into the content and devices we are connecting with. And it’s about time that our PDFs catch up too!

Read more: How To Embed PDF Files In Your Documents

How to create an interactive PDF, the hard way?

If you Google ‘how to create an interactive PDF,’ you’ll get suggestions to use Adobe’s InDesign software to create one. Yeah, but you’re probably thinking you gotta learn a design tool to create an interactive PDF? Sigh…

Every InDesign tutorial on the internet goes something like this- you create a PDF template with the software, then add your content, then go to their toolbar and add links, buttons, forms, bookmarks, etc. by going to their respective buttons and figuring out how to do it.

It’s a time-consuming process and definitely has a steep learning curve. This becomes even more unnecessary when we tell you that it takes seconds to make your PDFs interactive, rather than spending hours on it using design tools!

And this is not even the worst part! Even if you do manage to learn how to use InDesign or other design tools and create your interactive PDF after spending hours on it, it’s still not guaranteed to work on every PDF reader! Well, how about that?

Many of these interactive features of your PDF don’t work in programs other than Adobe Reader, Adobe Acrobat, and sometimes the internet. So if your reader (your peers, clients, manager, or investor) uses a PDF reader other than Adobe Acrobat or Reader, chances are that your interactive PDF will only appear as a PDF minus the interactivity. Tough luck!

How to create an interactive PDF, the easy way!

So if you want to create an interactive document, you either move up with times and learn complicated design tools and create docs that may or may not work. Or, you can use a tool that makes the process of creating an interactive document a cakewalk! Enter, Bit.ai.

Bit is a new age cloud-based document collaboration tool that helps teams create, manage, and track PDFs and other digital workplace documents with ease.

Bit allows teams to create and collaborate on interactive workplace documents like- project proposals, sales decks, training documents, how-to guides, company policies, process documentation, media kits, fact sheets, competitive research, case studies, e-books, etc.

Bit can also be used as a great client portal where you can invite guests (clients, contractors, vendors, or partners) into your workspace and share important interactive documents with ease.

Animated Pdf Examples Using

Example of an Interactive PDF

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