Notification on saved adobe form when unfilled "required fields not completed on save and exit

[manwacmike]

I have a question.  I recently created a form with some fields that were "required". The form seemed to work well.  I noticed some of the users were not populating the required fields but were able to save the form and close the file and did not get some type of notification that they did not fill out the the required fields. Is this how acrobat works? I would have expected some type of notification. Can you explain why this happens? I have adobe acrobat pro 2020.

[PDF Automation Station · Accepted solution]

The required property is not for warnings when saving, or the prevention of saving, it is for warning and prevention of submitting forms when the required fields are not completed.  You would have to create your own script for that.

[Tariq Dar]

Hi @manwacmike, 

In addition to what @PDF Automation Station has mentioned, it also depends on how the recipients open this form. If they use a third-party application this mandatory field notification may not work at all. 

~Tariq

[JR Boulay]

A user may have plenty of good reasons for saving a form that hasn't yet been completed, and fortunately there's no way of stopping them.
Required fields only block the submission of a form.
On the other hand, it is possible to create a script that alerts the user to the fact that certain required fields have not been filled in when saving, and then it's up to common sense.

Most of the time, all you need to do is add this simple sentence somewhere to avoid ‘oversights’: ANY INCOMPLETE OR ILLEGIBLE FORM WILL BE RETURNED WITHOUT PROCESSING.