How can I make a PDF Form secure without password?

[oboto]

I have to make a pdf, that needs to be fillable in Acrobat on mobile devices.

But my client demands that the form itself should not be editable by users.

Until today my approach has been to secure the pdf with a password - but this seems not to work for forms on mobile devices. With password security they become uneditable.

Is there a different way for simple mortal souls?

[try67]

You can try digitally signing it, making sure not to lock the fields when you do so.

[oboto]

Thank you for your feedback.

I have looked into that before, but I was deterred by the mention of servers I would have to connect to.

It sounded like a complex, costy thing,

Am I wrong? If you tell me, that it sounds more complicated than it actually is, I will dive into it gain.

[try67]

Yes, you're wrong. A digital signature that's located in the file itself doesn't require any servers and is completely free to use. All the user needs to do is click it, create a digital signature profile (if they don't already have one), enter their password and then save the file.

[Test Screen Name]

Bear in mind that a lot of apps will ignore all your security. You are going to a lot of trouble for zero real value.

[oboto]

Hmmm. Yes, you are probably right.

And communicated this to my client as well. His opinion is, that I should provide as much security as possible.

It all cooks down to the question, why Acrobat on iPad isn't able to handle forms that are allowed to be filled, but protected from editing. Can't be witchcraft?

[Test Screen Name]

You really would think that since Adobe make both pieces of software, give it the same name, and have the full source code, and quite a lot of programmers, that doing the same things ("feature parity") would be an achievable aim. Apparently not. There seems no interest at all in feature parity.