Best practices for docx template

When loading a Word document into eSignLive, the only way to automatically set the field locations is to use text anchors. Form field extraction only works from PDF. If you don't use text extraction, you'd have to place all fields manually in your code for your Word document.

So would you say PDF is the recommended and best supported template format? Would I need a paid licensed version of Adobe pdf software to make the templates or is there some alternative you can recommend for creating the template?

PDF forms would definitely make things the easiest as you'd be able to name your fields wit h the naming convention that eSignLive recognizes and be able to use document extraction without having to specify any fields or locations in your code. That said, many use Word documents and simply use the text anchoring feature. You can use relative locations to text already within the document or you could put small, background-colored text within your document at the locations you want your fields, so you don't have to worry as much about relative positioning. It's totally up to you and I'll gladly help you with either one. And yes, you'd need Adobe Acrobat or some other PDF form creation software to create your form. There are some free, online PDF form makers, but I'd say you'd use those types of things at your own risk. There is also the option to use an API like iText to create your forms.

Can you send me or point me to an example of a docx file with text anchoring? I did some googling on word text anchoring and it seems there are a lot of setting to consider and I'm not sure what would work best with esign software, so I'm looking for an example of best practices.

Take a look at this code share post on text anchors: https://developer.esignlive.com/code-share/using-text-anchors-net-sdk/ https://developer.esignlive.com/code-share/using-text-anchors-java-sdk/ https://developer.esignlive.com/code-share/using-text-anchors-rest-api/ Not sure which flavor you're using, so I added all three. The attached docx SHOULD work with the examples. Let me know if you have issues.

I see where some of the confusion is. When you said text anchoring you are referring to an esignlive API capability to do absolute positioning of input boxes. I thought you were referring to the microsoft word functionality also called text anchoring. I do not like the idea of using absolute positioning to place the text inputs on the form because any time the template is modified we would then need to do a bunch of trial and error to find the right position. In your response above you mention "relative locations to text already within the document or you could put small, background-colored text within your document at the locations you want your fields". I don't think either of these is being done in the cleaning_contract.docx or the samples you provided links to. Am I missing something?

I think I understand a little better now but in your text anchor example above are you sure you share the right document? The strings being looked for don't appear to be in cleaning_contract.docx.