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taylors51877212
taylors51877212
Participant
September 27, 2016
Question

Preventing third parties from locking a editable form

  • September 27, 2016
  • 1 reply
  • 375 views

We send out a fillable PDF form to initiate a permitting process in my office. Customers need to fill it out, and send it back to us. Once they send it back to us, there is still fields (Office Use Only fields) that we need to fill out and keep this as a living document that gets added to along the process.

The problem - about 75% of the time people send the form back, the fields are no longer editable...and then we have to recreate the whole, multi-page document, on our own. We also use the fields for merging data into Excel and what not too, so this creates a huge nuisance with the volume of permits we process. I've tried PDF Unlockers / Change to Editable PDF webapps and have had no success.

I'm guessing this is some kind of permission we need to set up on the original PDF? We essentially want to make it not possible for someone to save the file in a format that doesn't allow us to then continue editing it. Anyone know how some people save it this way, and others don't?

Any guidence would be helpful!

This topic has been closed for replies.

1 reply

G
gkaiseril
Inspiring
September 27, 2016

Do you know how they are filling out the for

You should instruct them to use Adobe Reader or Acrobat and not to certify or use the fill and sign tools.

With Acrobat you can export the form fields' data to an FDF file and then import that exported FDF file into a blank copy of the form.

taylors51877212
taylors51877212Author
Participant
September 27, 2016

We already instruct folks to use Reader to fill out the forms, but I will certainly add the note about not using "Certify" of "Fill and Sign" tools.

In the case of the Fill and Sign tools, are you suggesting that they are creating their own text boxes, over the forms already fillable fields, and that is why we can't edit them?

I would love to export to FDF with these, but none of the fields are editable anymore when we get them back from the customers.

    B
    bugsynic1008
    Participant
    December 6, 2016

    I have this same problem, I need the fields in the form to stay editable after saving with a signature.

    I've played around with a bunch of settings and still can't figure it out. Is saving a document with a signature not possible?

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