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ABBYY FormDesigner is a convenient tool designed specifically for creating machine-readable forms. In addition to forms that meet all the requirements of automated document processing, designing forms with ABBYY FormDesigner also gives you a Document Definition that is almost completely ready for processing these forms in ABBYY FlexiCapture. To obtain a Document Definition for processing forms designed with ABBYY FormDesigner, proceed as follows:

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In ABBYY FormDesigner:

  1. Create a form
  2. Publish it
  3. Export it to XML Form Definition format. You will get a file with the *.xfd extension.
For details about creating, publishing and exporting forms see the Help Topics and user guide of ABBYY FormDesigner.

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In ABBYY FlexiCapture:

  1. In the main program window, select the menu item Project → Document Definitions…;
  2. In the Document Definitions dialog box click the Import… button;
  3. In the Open file for import that opens, select XML Form Definition Files (*.xfd) from the Files of type drop-down list and specify the path to the *.xfd file;
  4. The name of the new Document Definition will appear in the Document Definitions list of the Document Definitions dialog box.
After opening an imported Document Definition for editing, you will see that the marking of fields and static elements is already present in the image. All you need to do is edit field properties and configure export.

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Using XFD files to update Document Definitions

A Document Definition that was created based on an XFD file can be updated using an XFD file without losing any changes made by the user in the Document Definition Editor. To update a Document Definition using an XFD file, open the Tools menu in the Document Definitions Editor, click Update Definition with XFD… and specify the path to the XFD file in the dialog box that opens. Page images will be replaced with images from the XFD file and blocks will be created based on the new description in the XFD file. Document Definition fields that are not present in the updated Document Definition will remain in the document structure. They will be marked with an asterisk and their blocks will not appear on images. A warning will be displayed when these elements are updated.
If the Document Definition contains multiple sections, every section must be updated individually. To update a section, select it in the document structure and execute the Update Definition with XFD… command.