The standard "Email Submit" button in LiveCycle Designer only submits data as XML. And of course many users would like to submit the entire PDF, and modify other submission options.

Solution

There are at least 3 different ways to perform a submit action on a LiveCycle form. The Email Submit button is probably the worst, but the XML for this button can be easily modified so that it sends the entire PDF. A better solution is to use a regular form button. It's not widely known, but the regular button provides a greater range of submit options than the email button. And for the greatest flexibility the submit can be performed with JavaScript.

Detailed explanation

This question gets asked a lot on the Acrobat User's forums and it has a few very simple solutions. The problem is that the component library in LiveCycle Designer contains an "Email Submit" button. Many users naturally select this as thier submit button. Unfortunately for this component, there are no options for controlling the behavior of the submit in the "Object Tab". The button submits XML formatted data only. And many users of course would like to submit the entire PDF.

Here are 3 solutions:

Modify the underlying XML for the "Email Submit": In LiveCycle designer with the form displayed, select the "Email Submit" button on your form. Use the "View > XML Source" menu item to display the XML source code for the form. The first line of the "Field" tag for this button should be selected and visible in the window. If you look down the XML tags inside the field you'll see an "event" tag that contains a "submit" action tag. This is what needs to be modified. Everything about the submit is controlled from here. To change the submission format, change the "format" property to "PDF", so the "submit" tag should now look like this:

<submit format="pdf" textEncoding="UTF-8" target="mailto:">
Use a regular form button: Place a regular form button on your form . Look on the Object Window for the button. On the Field tag, towards the bottom will be a set of "Control Type" radio buttons. Select the "submit" option. There should now be a "submit" tab in the Object window. Switch to the tab and on the "Submit As" pulldown select PDF.
Use a JavaScript: This is the most flexible method. With a script you can dynamically control every aspect of the data submission. See these articles at the Acrobat Users web site.

http://www.acrobatusers.com/tutorials/dynamically-setting-submit-e-mail-address

http://www.acrobatusers.com/tutorials/2006/submitting_data

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