You need DD Form 2717, and this page gives you the blank plus the steps for handling it. Start with what the form does: Department of Defense Voluntary/Involuntary Appellate Leave Action. Its official title is DD Form 2717, DoD Voluntary/Involuntary Appellate Leave Action, March 2013.
Your second step is the edition, not stated, listed as not stated. Your third is scope. Because the number carries a DD prefix, you use the same blank as every other military department and defense agency; no service-specific version exists for you to hunt down.
Then settle the schedule. You are working under not stated, with not stated responsible for the document, and your organization layers its own deadlines on that. Ask before you assume a date.
Last in this stage, choose your method: complete it on screen, or print the blank form and fill it out in pen. The sections below take each route step by step.
Now fill it in. Work from the top of the page downward, and do not jump ahead — the identifying block comes first, the substance of your entry second, the certification last. Later boxes often depend on what you put at the top.
Before your first entry, look at the corner of the page and compare the printed date with not stated. If they do not match, stop and download again. Old copies circulate in shared drives for years, and a DD form is revised centrally for every service at once, so a superseded blank may not carry the fields your reviewer expects.
Look up an unclear item on the form face before anywhere else, then in not stated. Should the two texts conflict, the directive is the one you follow.
Download the form
Begin by choosing a file. Available here: PDF. Plan for 3 pages and about 31 entries.
Whichever you pick, you pay nothing — every format here is a free download. One last tip: open your pdf in a desktop reader rather than in a browser tab, because browser viewers sometimes drop the interactive fields you need.
What the form asks for
- Section 1 - action memorandum. 1. To (inmate).
- 2. From (correctional facility).
- 3.a. Type of court martial.
- b. Date adjudged (4 digit year, 2 digit month, 2 digit day).
- c. Date court-martial approved by convening authority (4 digit year, 2 digit month, 2 digit day).
- d. Sentence.
- 4. You have accrued ordinary leave in the amount of (number of days).
- 6. Your request/mandatory appellate leave begins on (date).
- 21. If you have any further questions regarding your release on appellate leave, please contact:
- at DSN:
- or commercial (phone number).
- All correspondence shall be addressed to:
- You were briefed by (name, grade, title).
- Date (4 digit year, 2 digit month, 2 digit day).
- Signature.
- Section 2 - inmate endorsement. 1. To (Correctional facility - street, city, state and zip code).
- 2. Date (4 digit year, 2 digit month, 2 digit day).
- 3. I understand that I have accrued ordinary leave in the amount of (days).
- I have previously sold (days).
- and am entitled to sell a total of (days).
- Initial if electing to: a. Receive pay and allowances during the period of accured leave and then continue in unpaid appellate leave status; or
- Initial if electing to: b. Receive payment for the accrued leave, as of the day before the appellate leave begins, and then serve the entire period of appellate leave in unpaid leave status; or
- Initial if electing to: c. a combination of both a. and b. above.
- Receive pay and allowances for (days).
With the form finished, route it to the office named in not stated or in your organization's own instruction. Keep a copy first. People rarely regret having one and frequently regret not having one.
Should you need a related form, look it up by its number. The DD sequence is Department-wide, which makes your search simple: no service qualifier, no branch-specific variant to track down.
Be careful when a procedure pairs this form with a service form. Read the prefix, not just the digits. Service forms answer to a service proponent, while DD forms answer to not stated or an equivalent Department office, and the two sequences were never aligned. Grabbing the wrong prefix gets you a form that has nothing to do with your task.
Plan to repeat this step whenever the form comes up again. Revisions follow directive changes, changes in what data is collected, and updates to notice language. Since nobody notifies you, check not stated at download and you have covered it.
Finally, understand the limits of what you have read. This page distributes a published Department of Defense form and describes how to fill it out. It does not give legal or procedural advice, and it cannot promise any outcome for your particular case. For that, contact not stated, your administrative office, or the authority identified in not stated.
Questions and answers
- What is DD Form 2717?
- DD Form 2717, DoD Voluntary/Involuntary Appellate Leave Action, March 2013
- Which edition is current?
- Not stated by the publisher
- Who is responsible for this form?
- Not stated
- In which formats can it be downloaded?