Acrobat for mobile allows over-writing read-only files

Report · Oct 01, 2025

I have a fillable PDF with form fields which serves as a template.
Our employees need to access this form, fill it in and save it under a unique file name each time, without overwriting the original. Sometimes tens of times a day.

This would be perfect for the 'read only' checkbox as it forces the user to 'Save As' before exiting or saving, and that works fine on desktop, but when accessed via the Acrobat smartphone app, the fields can be filled-in, but if the user happens to push the back button on their phone's navigation, this instantly saves the document with all the information that has just been entered, overwriting the original file. This is despite the file being set to read-only.

This functionality is fine if the file is unprotected, but for a file being set to read-only, it seems like a bug because I'm not sure what the point of read-only is, when it clearly isn't, as it completely ruins the ability for the original to serve as a template.

Is there a workaround for this? I feel like Adobe needs some sort of dedicate 'template' feature for PDFs, as many people use forms in this way. For our purposes, overwriting the original file would ruin the employee's productivity and potentially contaminate further data entry, as they have no way of accessing the blank template from that point on.

thank you!

Report · Oct 02, 2025

Where have you stored the template?

Report · Oct 12, 2025

Hello Bernd,

The file is stored locally on their device / smartphone, however, I have given up with Adobe and gone with Jotform instead, it has vastly more capabilities. They have easy-to-design fillable forms that can be accessed by app or desktop and it generates a PDF output when submitted. Basically exactly what I was trying to do and far more.

Adobe seems a little stuck in the past!

I appreciate your help nonetheless.

Kind regards 🙂