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Unsaveable PDFs for tablet?

Forum|Forum|4 years ago
July 6, 2021
2 replies
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Hello,

I work for an HVAC company and we are looking into creating fillable PDFs for our servicemen to use on their tablets. The idea is that they would fill out the appropriate PDFs for customers and then send a copy via e-mail back to the accounting department to be filed. Ideally the PDFs wouldn't be saveable (having that many PDFs for each customer saved on their devices would be confusing and eat up a lot of storage). I've figured out how to make the PDFs unsaveable on PC, but once we share them to the tablets and open with Adobe Reader, they seem to save all changes made instead of automatically clearing. Additionally, I can't figure out how to e-mail a copy of the file; the only option I can see is to share the original file, which won't work if the technicians are filling out the form over and over for each new customer.

Is there any way to make this a possibilty--fillable PDF forms that can be emailed from a tablet and then automatically clear once closed?

Any help is appreciated.

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Correct answer Thom Parker

What's possible to do on a tablet depends entirely on the PDF viewer being used on that device. Most PDF viewers on mobile devices are total crap. There are only two that I know of that come even remotely close to handling the type of workflow you have described. Acrobat Mobile Reader and PDF Expert (IOS only). I believe both will handle form resets.

I would also suggest a different workflow than you've described. Instead of saving/sending the forms, save/send just the form data. In fact, the best way to do this is to submit the data from the tablet to a server, where it is stored in a DB. This data can then be retrieved by the people in the office and repopulated in the form. This gives you a central repository for the form data and saves a lot of space.

Thom Parker

Correct answer

Community Expert

What's possible to do on a tablet depends entirely on the PDF viewer being used on that device. Most PDF viewers on mobile devices are total crap. There are only two that I know of that come even remotely close to handling the type of workflow you have described. Acrobat Mobile Reader and PDF Expert (IOS only). I believe both will handle form resets.

I would also suggest a different workflow than you've described. Instead of saving/sending the forms, save/send just the form data. In fact, the best way to do this is to submit the data from the tablet to a server, where it is stored in a DB. This data can then be retrieved by the people in the office and repopulated in the form. This gives you a central repository for the form data and saves a lot of space.

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

T

Toi0101Author

Known Participant

Thanks for your reply! I'll look into Acrobat Mobile Reader for their tablets. This may be an obvious question (forgive me, I'm clearly not an expert in this area!) but how would we go about sending just the data to a server?

Appreciate your help!

Thom Parker

Community Expert

I'm not sure about what JS is available on the mobile viewer, it's been a while since I've used it. So "this.resetForm" might not be on the list. However, form data is sent to a server with the "this.submitForm()" function, and I'm pretty sure it works on mobile. This function does a regular HTTP Post. So you can uses a simple PHP script to Process the data server side.

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

Bernd Alheit

Community Expert

> I've figured out how to make the PDFs unsaveable on PC,

This is not possible!

T

Toi0101Author

Known Participant

I'm not sure what you mean by this--that it isn't possible to make unsaveable PDFs for the tablet, or that making them unsaveable on PC isn't possible? I've gone into JavaScript and created a document action so that the form resets before it saves or closes--in other words, the changes made to the document don't save, it resets itself each time (which is what I meant by unsaveable). That isn't my issue here--the problem is that the same function doesn't seem to work on tablet. Do you have any insight onto how to create fillable PDF forms that can be emailed from a tablet and then automatically clear once closed?

Bernd Alheit

Community Expert

You can't make the file unsaveable on PC and tablet.

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