Skip to main content
Participant
April 23, 2010
Question

Acrobat PDF: Remove Form Fields & Flatten Document

  • April 23, 2010
  • 4 replies
  • 156176 views

Looking for two procedures:

1) remove select/all form fields from a PDF

2) flatten a PDF document regardless of forms, annotations, comments, etc.

Thank you in advance to those who offer their expertise.

4 replies

Participant
September 26, 2020

Wow, the easiest way is to print the document to a PDF and in the "Documents and Forms" field chose "Document" only.  When it saves as a new PDF the info in the form fields will be retained and not available for edit any longer.  If the document also contained a signature it will also be retained.

Participant
September 26, 2020

Correction, "Comments and forms" not "Document and forms".  Sorry.

Anna Nmty
Inspiring
July 20, 2010

I'm a little late to the party here, but in case anyone looks here again, I use a free tool from WindJack Solutions (http://www.windjack.com/products/freestuff.html) that can be downloaded here: http://www.pdfscripting.com/public/65.cfm. The tool you want is "Flatten Page Content Tool". This will add a separate little toolbar to Acrobat containing javascript for a flattening function.

On my machine, the script is stored in the  C:\Program Files\Adobe\Acrobat 9.0\Acrobat\Javascripts folder and is available whenever I use Acrobat.

All fields, annotations, etc., will be permanently flattened after using the tool.

FYI for the paranoid, though: pdf files can still be edited in Illustrator, Photoshop and other programs. Someone could even add form fields over your previous form fields, flatten the fields with the tool described above and alter your form that way. Where there is a will...

August 12, 2010

perfect!!! thank you


Luke Jennings
Inspiring
April 23, 2010

To remove all form fields you could simply select and delete them (under forms> edit), or go to Advanced> PDF optimizer> discard user data> discard all comments, forms and multimedia.

Phillip M  Jones
Inspiring
April 23, 2010

another way if you need them but don't want them try one of these adjustments when printing:

Phillip M  Jones
Inspiring
April 23, 2010

You need to explain better the first request.

Second Try this:

Participant
April 23, 2010

Phillip,

We received a PDF from an organization which allowed us to fill in fields on a form.  Now that the fields are filled in, we want to flatten document and forward to a colleague without allowing for any further modification.  In other words, is there a method to flatten/remove form fill capability after markups are complete (this would include not only form fields, but adding sticky notes, comments, or any other type of markup and then flattening it while retaining data from these markup tools)?

Thank you again.

SA