To do this you would need the full Adobe Acrobat package.  The Acrobat editor
in it does permit adding editable fields to a .pdf document.  Unlike the
Acrobat Reader the full package is not free.  I don't think free alternatives
for turning documents into .pdf format have that feature.

Acrobat's 'fields' are robust enough for most work - accepting text, dates,
or numeric information which you have some control over.  You can even do
some Excel-like calculations between them although it is very "expensive".  I
once set up a document that was required to be in .pdf format and used a few
hundred 'cells' and the file size was so huge I couldn't send it anywhere as
an email attachment!  

I keep noticing that the Office 2007 package has .pdf support, but to be
honest, I haven't looked it yet, so don't know what its capabilities or
limitations are.  I suspect that it is probably like the free offerings - you
can turn things into uneditable .pdf documents for distribution.

Haplo - you may be thinking of the fields you can place onto a sheet or
UserForm from the Forms menu bar: View : Toolbars : Forms.  But I think once
you turn it into .pdf those are going to be non-editable.  

If you get desperate for it, and if there aren't too many fields beyond the
basic name, address, phone number, email address, I'd be willing to assist.  
I have Adobe Acrobat Pro, versions 6 and 7, and if you'd be willing to send
the Excel file as an email attachment to 2kmaro-at-dslr-dot-net, I'd try to
help.

But you should be warned also that there are limitations on doing the edits
- you pretty much have to print at the time of edit.  Mind is fuzzy here - I
don't use Acrobat that often - but I'm thinking that you can't save the
document with the changes/entries made.  They exist only while the document
is open.  Seems there may be around this, but it doesn't immediately come to
mind.  Well, I know one way, but it requires using the editor to enter your
information and obviously all of your recipients are not going to just have a
$200 software package laying around to handle the once-a-year need.

thanks for the help.
I will try the screenshot workaround as it seems like the closest thing to
what we want. I'm not sure why we don't have Adobe Pro (we have Adobe
Standard) because clearly we want the extra functionality. Oh well.

Thank you very much for the advice!

Haplo.