Begin by matching the form to your task. DA Form 479-1 is titled PUBLICATION AND BLANK FORM STOCK RECORD CARD (VISIBLE FILE), and you reach for it when you need to publication and blank form stock record card (visible file). Once that matches, check the date. The edition here is 06/01/2021, published with the status ACTIVE. After that, glance at the length: you will be working through 2 page(s) and somewhere near 200 fields. Check this before anything else — a more recent edition is out. Stay on this one only if the record you are handling was already completed on it.
Next, find out whether you are the one who fills it. In most cases you complete the entries yourself, and an administrator in your unit reviews what you wrote before it moves on. If you are the administrator, you will be working from what the individual gives you. Either way, CIO owns the form and PAM 25-38 tells you when to raise it and where it goes afterward, so read the directive first if your situation is not routine.
Start at the top of the page and work down. The heading blocks come first: write your name as it appears on your official records, then your identification number, then your unit or organisation, then the date you are preparing the form. Do not skip ahead to the interesting parts and come back — these heading entries are how your form is found in the file afterwards, and a form filed under a misspelled name is a form nobody can locate.
Now for the body. Use tab to advance through the fields; the order was set when the form was built and following it keeps you from leaving gaps. Check boxes and option buttons take a click. Where the options are mutually exclusive, choosing one will clear another, which is how the group is meant to behave. As you type longer entries, watch the field edge. One-line fields do not wrap, and anything past the edge prints missing even when you can still read it on screen — when that happens, put the text in remarks or on a continuation sheet. Leave nothing blank because it does not apply; enter the mark that means it does not apply, so the reviewer knows you read the question.
Sign at the end and not before. Use ink or the electronic method your office accepts; whatever the state of the entries, an unsigned form is still a draft. When a reviewer, approver or witness has to sign as well, collect those signatures in printed block order and make sure each one is dated the day it was applied, not the day you started. Then read the form through once from the beginning. Three faults account for most rejections: a required field left blank, an identification number with two digits swapped, and a date whose day and month are reversed. Add a fourth if you began from an old working copy — data left over from the last time will travel forward untouched.
You will find a Privacy Act statement on the form wherever personal information is collected. Read it at that point rather than skipping past it, because it tells you the authority for the collection, the purpose, the routine uses, and whether answering is mandatory. After you fill the form, remember that your copy contains personal data. Store it and transmit it as your office requires for records of that kind.
Download the form
Next comes the download itself. The formats available are PDF, XFDL, and you decide between them by asking how you will enter the information. If you plan to type, take the fillable pdf: the boxes accept keyboard input and you can save the result. If you plan to write by hand, take the printable pdf and run it through your printer while it is still blank. Both show the same published page, so the decision affects your method and nothing else.
Once the file is on your machine, open it deliberately. A pdf will usually launch in your browser, which reads well enough but does not always hold what you type; certain viewers display the fields and then discard your entries. Save the download to a folder, open it from there in a dedicated reader, and test one field and one save before you commit to filling the whole thing. If the xfdl file is what you need, install the IBM Lotus Forms Viewer first. No pdf reader and no word processor will open it.
Then simply download. There is no charge, no sign-up and no email to hand over, and the file that arrives is exactly what the publisher released.
What the form asks for
- ContentArea1
- DATE_A
- DATE_A_1
- DATE_A_10
- DATE_A_2
- DATE_A_3
- DATE_A_4
- DATE_A_5
- DATE_A_6
- DATE_A_7
- DATE_A_8
- DATE_A_9
- DATE_B
- DATE_B_1
- DATE_B_10
- DATE_B_11
- DATE_B_12
- DATE_B_2
- DATE_B_3
- DATE_B_4
- DATE_B_5
- DATE_B_6
- DATE_B_7
- DATE_B_8
With the form signed, send it where PAM 25-38 tells you to send it — usually to the office it names, or through your unit administrative channel, or straight into your own record, depending on why you raised it. Keep a copy for yourself before it leaves your hands. How long the receiving office holds it is not your decision or theirs; the records schedule for the series settles that, and local habit does not override it.
Should the package need more than one document, search by series and number. Within the DA series, forms under the same proponent or the same prescribing directive tend to be required as a set, and a form referenced on the page you are filling usually accompanies it. Collect the continuations, covers and transmittals up front so the submission goes complete the first time.
Check the edition date again the next time you reach for this form. Editions change when the proponent revises the content, and a copy you saved months ago may no longer be current — compare the date printed on your file against the edition in force before you type anything into it. What you do not need to do is redo work already finished: a form you completed and submitted under an earlier edition stays as it is.
Read this before you go. The file you download is a reproduction of a published Department of the Army document, offered as it was published. We are an independent site with no connection to the Department of the Army and no authority to issue anything, and we make no statement about whether your completed form will be accepted anywhere. Treat what you read here as information, not legal advice. Take real questions — about an entry, a requirement, or your eligibility — to CIO or to your servicing administrative office.
Questions and answers
- What is DA Form 479-1?
- PUBLICATION AND BLANK FORM STOCK RECORD CARD (VISIBLE FILE)
- Which edition is current?
- 06/01/2021
- Who is responsible for this form?
- CIO
- In which formats can it be downloaded?
- PDF, XFDL, PDF