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Remove blue box behind editable text on PDF for emailing

Community Beginner ,
Feb 24, 2021 Feb 24, 2021

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Hi, 

 

Hope someone can help. I am trying to get rid of the blue box which appears behind text in editable/filable areas of a pdf.

 

From reading other posts I think I'm right in saying that when such a document is printed out the blue boxes don't appear. However, if I'm not using the editable PDF for printing purposes, I am making text changes in the editable area and then want to send it on to a client for their final use, how do I save it with the new text I've entered showing and not the blue box?

 

In case that didn't make sense - 

I have for example a form which has the following text on it:

 

Dear

 

Blah blah blah blah

 

Many thanks

 

I have created an editable area next to Dear, and I just want to be able to input someone's name, save the pdf off and email it to them. How do I save it without the blue box behind that text??

 

Thanks

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Create PDFs , Edit and convert PDFs , How to , PDF forms

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Community Expert ,
Feb 24, 2021 Feb 24, 2021

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I belive it's field highlitning, you can turn it off, Go to Edit->Preferences (or CTRL+K) then select 'forms' and uncheck 'show border hover color for fields' but keep in mind it only will be turned off on your computer other users will have to do same in order to remove highlight.

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Community Beginner ,
Feb 24, 2021 Feb 24, 2021

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Thanks for your reply but that's the issue I'm trying to find a solution to.

 

I want to have an editable PDF that I can use digitally (email it to people). Do editable/fillable PDFs always show the blue highlighting and it's only removed when it's printed out?? Somewhat frustrating if so, as I never want to print them out!

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Community Expert ,
Feb 24, 2021 Feb 24, 2021

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No, not always. It's up to the user to decide whether or not to show it.

It is possible, however, to embed a script in your file to disable this option, but it's not recommended to do that as it will also affect all other files the user opens, so at the very least you should inform them of making this change.

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Community Beginner ,
Feb 24, 2021 Feb 24, 2021

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and there was me getting all excited that someone had a solution for me.....

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Community Expert ,
Feb 24, 2021 Feb 24, 2021

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Is the one I mentioned not good enough?

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Community Beginner ,
Feb 24, 2021 Feb 24, 2021

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That I have to email my clients ahead of sending them a PDF to ask them to change a particular settings in their systems so they can view a PDF design without a weird distracting blue box appearing in the layout? Nope, not 100% ideal and professional!

 

But thanks for taking time to acknowledge and reply to my original enquiry (for clarity, that was a sincere statement, not sarcasm!)

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Community Expert ,
Feb 24, 2021 Feb 24, 2021

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That's not what I said. And it might be distracting for you, but for many other people it a helpful way to make fields visible.

To reiterate, you can disable this function from within your file, without the user having to do anything.

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Community Beginner ,
Feb 24, 2021 Feb 24, 2021

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But what if the end purpose of the file is not to be edited? For instance in the following made up example.

 

A marketeer creates a PDF for the head office of a chain of 30 garden centres.

The design of the PDF is lovely pictures of flowers and descriptions of services offered at the generic garden centre - and this imagery and info applies to each of the 30 garden centres.

On the PDF the marketeer creates an editable/fillable area for each of the individual garden centres to input their address under the generic text "Come and visit your local branch of Green Thumbs at ........."

The head office of the garden centre chain sends the editable PDF to each of the 30 garden centres.

Each of the managers at the 30 garden centres fills in their unique address and then gets ready to email the PDF out to their database of customers

 

What can be done to stop the customers receiving the email from seeing the blue box around the editable area? As obviously the garden centres do not want the strange blue box appearing around the editable areas, nor do they want the customers editing the info.

 

Perhaps there's a different way for me to ask my question.

In the above example, after the manager has added his address details, is there a way to turn off the editable areas and turn the amended PDF into a non editable PDF (retaining the new address he has just inputted and removing any trace of blue boxes)?

 

Thanks

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Community Expert ,
Feb 24, 2021 Feb 24, 2021

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Yes, you can set those fields as read-only, or have the user digitally sign the file, and the signature field can be set to lock them. The former is easier, but less secure.

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Community Expert ,
Feb 24, 2021 Feb 24, 2021

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There is couple of solution to your problem not all are great but it can be done.

As try67 mentioned if everyone fill out fields you can make them readonly, when they are readonly they are not highlighted.

Solution 1: Not recomended but doable, You can put script as document level to turn off highlights when document open and then add document action to turn back on highlight when document close so it won't affect users other documents. But what if they already have turned it off, then when close document it will be on and maybe it's not what they want, but like I said it's doable.

 

Solution 2: Make field readonly so it doesn't have highlight, then add script to 'On focus' event when field is clicked it will be editable and then add another script to 'On Blur' event when field lose focus it's readonly again.

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Community Beginner ,
Feb 24, 2021 Feb 24, 2021

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Thanks both, I will give the read only a try.

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Community Beginner ,
Feb 25, 2021 Feb 25, 2021

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Tell the managers to Print it as PDF after they fill the form. all the editable fields will disapear. 

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Community Beginner ,
Feb 25, 2021 Feb 25, 2021

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thanks felipe, but they are emailing it, not printing it

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Community Beginner ,
Feb 25, 2021 Feb 25, 2021

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Hi, click print, then when it asks what printer to send, select Print As PDF, this will create a new PDF file. That new file wont have the blue boxes. You can email thia new PDF file.

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Community Beginner ,
Feb 25, 2021 Feb 25, 2021

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that could be the perfect solution. thanks!

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Community Expert ,
Feb 25, 2021 Feb 25, 2021

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It's really not. Re-printing a PDF file just to get rid of the form fields' fill color is a very bad idea.

You'll be losing a lot of additional information in the process.

A much better solution is to sign the file (which is reversible) or just flatten it (which is not, but is still much better then "re-frying" it).

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Community Beginner ,
Feb 25, 2021 Feb 25, 2021

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Flattening the PDF does exactly what I'm trying to achieve.

 

We got there in the end!

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Community Beginner ,
Feb 25, 2021 Feb 25, 2021

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Glad I could help with my very bad idea 😄

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Community Beginner ,
May 05, 2021 May 05, 2021

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I tried this and it then the PDF lost its functionality of being able to tick the boxes and more importantly the 'signature' box !!

 

This seems crazy that you cant get rid of these blue boxes, l also have some dotted lines as well !

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Community Expert ,
May 05, 2021 May 05, 2021

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Perhaps you didn't read through the thread? There were several solutions proposed. You can turn off the field highlighting from either the Acrobat Preferences, or by using a script. And that flattening a PDF removes the fields entirely. So if you don't want to remove the fields, then just turn off field highlighting. 

Thom Parker - Software Developer at PDFScripting
Use the Acrobat JavaScript Reference early and often

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Community Beginner ,
May 05, 2021 May 05, 2021

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Hi Thom, thanks for your reply, it was more my dotted lines and over lapping blue boxes that was my problem.

I had a nice long phone call with one of your colleagues and it turned out we had drawn the box with the Rectangle Frame Tool rather than Rectangle Tool ! And not picked the right tick to put in that box !

Thanks though for taking the time out to reply.

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