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Participant
August 23, 2018
Answered

Can no longer fill out pdf form

  • August 23, 2018
  • 2 replies
  • 81715 views

I have Adobe PDF Pack. My package ends in March 2019. Yesterday (Aug 22) I downloaded a pdf and began to fill out the form. I saved it so I could continue today. When I opened it today, I am no longer able to fill out the form. What happened? Worked fine yesterday. Today, I'm locked out.

Correct answer AkanchhaS8194121

Hi Michaelc,

Sorry to hear about the trouble.

There are couple of possibilities that after saving the form it isn't editable-

1- If you have added signature to the form and then saved it, then you can't edit it again. As adding the signature to the form is last step which makes it secure so that it would not be edited by anyone.

2- The person who created the form or own this form has to save this form as "Reader Extended PDF" so that the form can be re-edited after saving. This can only be done by the owner of the form.

Or as a work around you need to re-download the form and start all over again.

For detailed description please read this- How to edit fields in PDF form after saving

Hope this helps!

Regards,

Akanchha

2 replies

Participant
August 20, 2019

Hi,

I have the same issue - I mistakenly played with signing and locked my form that I have spent hours on.

I tried to create a new form and copy the form fields over but cannot do anything with them e.g. move or delete and the fields (clear form, Fax to NCR) do not work when I preview the form.

Is there any other way around this? Can I send my form to Adobe and get it fixed?

RESOLVED:

I worked it out - the issue is all of the fields were locked and read only. Untick both of these and good to go.

Participant
November 6, 2020

thanks, where do you go to have the option to untick read only?

Participant
May 19, 2022

If you haven’t figured this out by now, it’s a bit buried. The solution is very simple though. Select "Prepare Form" from the tools on the right. You then will see all the fields on your form. Page by page, select all the forms on each page and then option or control click to get the flyout menu where you will see "Properties..." as the topmost option. Select "Properties" Under the "General" tab you will see an area that has "Common Properties" as a header. There is a small radio box in the upper right of the area "Read Only" make sure that this radio box is unchecked. Then select the next header to the right of "General" this is called "Appearance." On the lower left will be a radio box with the title "Locked" make sure this radio box is unchecked. Close the prepare form after doing this for all the fields on all pages (you can shift click to select all the fields on a given page) and you should now be able to enter information on your form once more.

AkanchhaS8194121
AkanchhaS8194121Correct answer
Legend
August 24, 2018

Hi Michaelc,

Sorry to hear about the trouble.

There are couple of possibilities that after saving the form it isn't editable-

1- If you have added signature to the form and then saved it, then you can't edit it again. As adding the signature to the form is last step which makes it secure so that it would not be edited by anyone.

2- The person who created the form or own this form has to save this form as "Reader Extended PDF" so that the form can be re-edited after saving. This can only be done by the owner of the form.

Or as a work around you need to re-download the form and start all over again.

For detailed description please read this- How to edit fields in PDF form after saving

Hope this helps!

Regards,

Akanchha