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kellybjoy
Participant
August 26, 2016
Question

Preparing PDF Form for users who will fill out and re-send as an email attachment

  • August 26, 2016
  • 3 replies
  • 534 views

Due to regulatory issues, we want our sales force to use specific flyers where they can alter only certain areas.  We've set up PDF forms for them to use (to add their local contact info, etc.).  They will fill this out in Reader, then save and send on as an email attachment to their customers.  If the customer is viewing this PDF on an iOS device, they won't see any of the form field info.  I've seen lots of work-arounds for this from the user end, but we cannot expect our customers to open up the PDF in a certain way or run javascripts on them so the form fields appear. 

My question is:  Is there anything I can do to the form as I build it in Acrobat that will allow the sales rep to fill out the form in Reader, then execute an action...hit a button? export? what? To flatten the form fields so they will be visible to the customers who use iOS devices.  Once the form is filled out by the sales rep, it no longer needs to be editable, so flattening (or even saving out as a JPG) would be OK...but whatever happens has be be executed from Reader by the sales reps.  And to complicate things, many of them will probably be filling out the form on an iPad.  We can somewhat control their actions (letting them know they must always fill out the form from their laptops, for example).  But we cannot control the customers' opening and viewing actions, so if there was a way to set up a button action or something that the reps could easily hit to flatten (I know, can't flatten in Reader ) or save out as a JPG or something, this would be helpful!  Thanks.

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3 replies

NKOWA555
Inspiring
November 22, 2016

If you are using a website with ASP.net, you can flatten the form fields using iTextSharp and send to your desired recipients using an SMTP account.

Visit the following website for an online example: (see example #3)

www.pdfemail.net/examples/

Inspiring
August 26, 2016

Since many of the sales reps will be using an iPad, consider having them use Readdle's PDF Expert. It is able to flatten and send in one operation. It's not free, but it's a bargain at $9.99.

anamvp1
Participant
November 22, 2016

Sorry but hijacking this post to ask a question- can you design a form that we can have on our internal dashboard that can be saved as a PDF when filled out and saved within the dashboard?

try67
Community Expert
Community Expert
August 26, 2016

No, it's not possible to flatten the form or export it as an image file in Reader.

The best you can do is to set the fields as read-only, and/or lock them by digitally signing the file.