topic Re: Is it possible to communicate between SAS and fillable pdf in SAS Programming

Is it possible to communicate between SAS and fillable pdf

lei — Mon, 27 Apr 2020 17:17:54 GMT

Hi all,

I have been trying everything and nothing seems to work.

i have a fillable PDF form. I have a bunch of study participants ID and would like to populate either the header or footer of the PDF or just to print it anywhere on the PDF. Is this possible? If yes, some guidance would be really appreciated.

thank you

Re: Is it possible to communicate between SAS and fillable pdf

Reeza — Mon, 27 Apr 2020 17:37:01 GMT

Not directly but with some wrangling you can kind of do it, but you may need Adobe Pro.

I usually use VB to interact with my adobe files but have SAS generate the code.

Do you have XCMD enabled so you can interact with your files via X commands?

Re: Is it possible to communicate between SAS and fillable pdf

lei — Mon, 27 Apr 2020 17:38:43 GMT

Yes I do have xcmd enabled.

Re: Is it possible to communicate between SAS and fillable pdf

Reeza — Mon, 27 Apr 2020 17:56:09 GMT

I would recommend using pdftk to fill it out via command line and then have SAS call it. If you have Adobe Pro - you may also want to look into their automator tool/javascript coding. You can automate processes within Adobe as well. This recommendation is definitely a 'hacked approach'. You're using another tool entirely - in this case primarily your OS tools and then you can call those from SAS.

http://joewiz.org/2014/02/13/filling-pdf-forms-with-pdftk-xfdf-and-xquery/

http://preserve.mactech.com/articles/mactech/Vol.20/20.11/FillOnlinePDFFormsUsingHTML/index.html