By default, the “Send by Email” button in the LiveCycle designer menu submits interactive PDF form data as an XML attachment. The recipient must then import the XML data into a local copy of the PDF file using Adobe Acrobat Professional.

For many users this is fine, but I needed a way to email the data within a PDF attachment. The clear benefit of this is that users without Acrobat Professional can read the data simply by downloading the free Adobe Reader.

There is a surprisingly simple way to achieve this, in two stages:

Stage 1: Enable usage rights in Adobe Reader

1. Open your form in Adobe LiveCycle Designer
2. Choose Advanced > Enable usage rights in Adobe Reader

Stage 2: Create the email button

1. Drag a “Send by email” button into your file
2. With the button selected, chose View > XML Source
3. Find the following code:
   
   <event activity="click">
   <submit format="xml" target="mailto:example@example.com?subject=Example" textencoding="UTF-8"></submit>
   </event>

4. Change the format attribute on the submit tag from “xml” to “pdf”, and save your changes.