A "what is the best way?" question

[Lani]

Is it possible to create a form that can be sent by email, be easily filled in and emailed back...I am looking at doing our camera club registrations by email and am not sure which program would best to use to create it. I can do it in word, using tables...but curious to know if there is a better way.
Thanks in advance for any help.

[pgbphotographytas]

We have some PDF files at work which all you to fill in the details and then print them off to send away to be used.

Paul

[Lani]

I want to do it all electronically Paul, to save on printing, post etc. ;)

[ricktas]

You can do PDF forms that the user can complete on their screen and email back. I have never tried to make one, but you would probably need to buy Acrobat to do it.

[MarkChap]

Yeah an editable PDF would be the way to go.

[MarkChap]

It would appear that Cyte PDF can do it as well, a lot cheaper than full on Acrobat

http://www.cutepdf.com/

[Lani]

Thanks, I have acrobat and cutepdf, so will have a look into it further....didn't realise you could make editable PDF's.

[phild]

It can be done as a webpage relatively easily with some forms and PHP scripting. A couple of years ago, I managed to do some email reply web forms with Frontgpage using PHP scripting.

I can't gove you specifics, my memory's not that good, but I managed to find a script to work with the frontpage generated forms, from memory it wasn't that hard.

[Tannin]

PDF has its problems and incompatibilities, but it might work for you.

The best way would be to have an on-line form: you send the emails out with a link to the form in them, they click on it, fill it out using their browser, and it (the form) emails itself to you. If desired, it can also store all the info directly into a membership database, though that adds quite a bit of extra programming overhead.

[Lani]

Thanks Phil and Tony....the online format sounds like more of what I had in mind, the easier it is to fill out the higher the response rate,...might handball to the guy who looks after our website. :D Coding tends to do my head in a bit....like a foreign language.

[jev]

Adobe's acrobat reader can't save edits AFAIK, it can only print a filled form or send the results back to you.

Online form would be easiest. Try using google docs, great way to set up a form and publish it. The results are than stored in a spreadsheet and can be represented graphically. Very powerful and free :).

[Lani]

Thanks Jev....effective and free is good. ;)