I am embeding a PDF form on my web application. The application allows you to fill in the fields in the form, and when you are done, click on a "Submit" button, which saves whatever you've entered into the form. This functionality is working fine.
Unfortunately, Adobe Reader displays a message on top of their embeded control that says: "Please fill out the following form. You cannot save data typed into this form. Please print your completed form if you would like a copy for your records."
Now, I know what Adobe Reader is trying to tell the user. Basically, Adobe Reader will not allow you to save the contents of what you've entered into your local hard drive as a new PDF.
However, since we've added a Submit button which effectively will save what they typed within our application, and it is working. Therefore, we think this message is misleading, and would like to remove it.
I use iTextSharp in .Net for our form automation server side. I have not found a way to remove this message from the embeded forms.
Any help?
It has been a long time, but adobe has added option to hide this annoying message.
On OSX 11.0.3, Preferences>Forms>Always hide document message bar
I'm pretty sure that there is no way around this if you want to continue to use Acrobat Reader to display the PDF. This message is built into Acrobat Reader, and I am not aware of any way to override it from the outside.
Sorry, this is more in the way of a negative answer than a positive one.
There are some third-party, free, projects that are basically PDF viewers for .NET. This would allow you to get rid of the message by avoiding Acrobat Reader entirely, although this is a large amount of work just to get rid of a message.
This one is pretty comprehensive.
Another option that I'm sure you already thought of is to just build the form on the web page, instead of using the PDF. Again, a lot of extra work just to remove a message.
Adobe Acrobat (Standard and Pro) can change PDF forms to enable Adobe Acrobat Reader users to 'fill+save' form data (instead of the standard 'fill+print').
It is a special option available when saving the PDF saying "Save PDF with extended Reader functions" (or similar... I'm translating this back from German into English).
This cannot be achieved with any non-Adobe PDF creating software (unless this has licensed that function from Adobe). The technical reason for this is that Adobe uses a digital signature to protect this function, and that you'll have to agree to not reverse engineer the key when you accept the Adobe EULA. Acrobat Reader has that key compiled into its binary, and if it verified the key, it will change the message displayed to the user indicating that the form data of this document can be saved (it will also change its behaviour and indeed save the data).
Maybe this info helps you?
Switch to View > Full Screen Mode (short cut is on a mac is ⌘L).
Although this mode hides all menus and scroll bars too, I prefer it. IMHO the reader uses far too much screen real estate on junk)
Related
I would like a PDF for some support workers, which should be easily editable.
I need it to ask on first open for a kind of Customer ID. This should be inserted into the document. Is this possible?
Thanks for help!
This requires either a smart PDF viewer (such as Adobe Acrobat (Reader) on computers, PDFExpert on iDevices, qPDF on Android) OR serverside support.
In the first case, you would use the app.response() method to let the user enter that identifier and then set the result to the according field's value. That could be placed in the PageOpen event of the page the document opens.
Also doing its purpose would be setting the focus to that field when the page opens.
With server support, you could set up a HTML page where the user enters the identifier, submit that to the server, and have the server prefilling the form, using either a ready application like FDFMerge by Appligent, or using one of the PDF creating libraries floating around (such as iText, pdflib, etc.).
With the latest Adobe PDF smart forms, following are my questions:
1) Could the PDF form itself detect or be aware of what client software itself is opened with?
2) When a PDF form is opened inside a browser plugin, could the script on the form read from browser cookies? and also could the script on the form write into browser cookies?
Thanks for the info.
"latest smart forms"… this has been done for the last 15 years…
To 1): The first distinction is to make whether the PDF viewer used understands (Acrobat) JavaScript.
If not, your smart form will remain dumb, and there is nothing you can change (if the viewer allows submitting data, you could do a server-side data processing and form filling and return the filled PDF to the client).
If the PDF viewer understands (Acrobat) JavaScript, you have the possibility to test for the kind of viewer, its version, as well whether it is external (which means whether you view the form under a web browser). See the Acrobat JavaScript documentation (which is part of the Acrobat SDK, downloadable from the Adobe website).
To 2): The answer is simple: no. This is not allowed (and implemented) for security reasons.
Hope this can help.
Max Wyss.
I've got a form that I downloaded, I'd like to prefill some content on the form (this is easy using cfpdfform).
Where it gets tricky is I would like to allow the user to modify the contents of that form, and then somehow have those modified contents accessible to me. I didnt build the source PDF so I dont know how to allow the user to "save" the new contents so they can be read.
Any ideas on where I might start on this one?
You can also use the cfpdfform tag to read/write data to a PDF file which has a form. The important thing is that the PDF document already have the form fields available, or that you add them.
I just recently completed a task where I had to have a user fill out a normal web form, and then create a filled version of an existing PDF document. It worked like a breeze!
I think that depending on what you are trying to accomplish, having the user fill out the data in a web form is less confusing than serving up a PDF and expecting them to save that to update a file on a remote server. Just my opinion, though.
http://www.cfquickdocs.com/cf8/?getDoc=cfpdfform#cfpdfform
It's possible for users to complete most PDF forms in Adobe Reader, but when user's try to save the changes they get a popup prompting them that the PDF cannot be saved and would need to upgrade to Adobe Acrobat to have this functionality.
Since Acrobat 7 (or possibly) 8 it's possible to create a form so that it can be completed and saved in reader. In Acrobat open your PDF, and select Advanced -> Enable usage right in reader from the menu. This will prompt you to save the form and then anyone using Adobe reader can complete it.
Once that's done you can open the form in ColdFusion, populate some of the fields and serve it up to the user. Once they fill it in, save it and get it back in ColdFusion you can read the contents using the PDF related tags.
Please note: It's currently not possible to set the "enable usage rights in reader" flag from ColdFusion, you need a copy of Adobe Acrobat or access to Adobe LifeCycle server to do this.
This document may help you:
http://www.adobe.com/education/instruction/teach/coldfusion/CF8-2_advanced_cf8_development_unit8.pdf
Although it would be nice to not use PDF, we are using a legacy system that only generates PDF forms.
I am working with some PDF forms that embed JavaScript to submit data back to a server. The form works when viewed and filled out in the browser.
Unfortunately, our users like to download the forms to their computer, fill them out completely, and only then get an error from Acrobat Reader that it cannot submit the form unless it is loaded in a browser.
How can I make the JavaScript form submission work outside of the web browser, prevent the users from downloading the form, or have the form warn them it won't work before they fill it out?
My knowledge of PDF is probably at least one version of Acrobat behind the curve, but I think the short answer to your question is "You can't".
From a bigger picture point of view: the use of PDF as a data entry user interface is a path of much pain and suffering.
If your objective is to provide a picture-perfect UI available over the web, look at solutions like Blueprint CSS.
If your objective is to provide a 'rich' user experience, look at JQuery.
If your objective is to save yourself the work of replicating an existing document as a web form, then you have not yet learned how much real work it takes to use PDF as a data-entry mechanism.
I am working on a legacy app in VB6 and am wondering what the easiest way would be to implement this requested feature - client wants ability to preview a document being sent to the printer as a PDF. No problem - there are plenty of PDF printer drivers out there that one can use. However, a necessary condition of this feature is absolute transparency - in other words, it should work out of the box after installation of the app, without having to say "To use this feature go to such-and-such website and download this pdf printer driver." In addition, client does not want to see a "Save As..." dialog. The ideal function of the feature is that a button is clicked, and what would have been sent straight to the printer is instead instantly previewed as a PDF that pops up with no further interaction with the user other than the user's initial pressing of a button.
Of course, there are a gazillion PDF packages out there, but they all seem to be along the lines of "here's an API where you can generate PDFs by directly writing lines, circles, graphics, text in specified fonts right to the PDF file". I do not want this - I want something that takes the data that is going right to the printer and pop it up as a PDF without a Save As
Now, CutePDF seems to have something like what I am looking for with their Custom PDF Writer (http://www.cutepdf.com/Solutions/pdfwriter.asp), but a) they do not seem to have an evaluation version; b) they do not seem to have much documentation about it that I can see, and c) it's freakin' expensive
Does anyone know if anything else like CutePDF Custom PDF Writer exists, or is that the only one of its type? I am open to any software as long as it gets this done, be it commercial, shareware, open source, whatever, so long as it satisfies the requirements of:
Must be a PDF printer (i.e. take the data going to the printer and turn it into a PDF)
must be completely transparent to end user (i.e. user must not have to change their printer settings and then change them back, or deal with a Save As dialog and then open the file they saved - it needs to just pop up)
must work with VB6
must be able to be packaged and installed along with the app without the end user having to run another setup program
any ideas?
Thanks in advance :)
We've started using Bio PDF Writer, available here: www.biopdf.com.
It does offer the ability to silently install (which we do). It also offers the capability to write out to a pdf file silently, requiring an ini file to be created first to do so.
However, it is more expensive for a site license than CutePDF is (1,499 vs 299/499). you can buy a single license for 29.99 (USD). This may cover their needs (if it is just one client). Their documentation is pretty decent and they do have a trial version (that, as far as I can tell, has no limitations to it).
You should be able to use any PDF printer software that provides a silent install option and just set the current printer when you need to print via PDF:
Dim oldPrinter as VB.Printer
Set oldPrinter = Printer
Dim p as VB.Printer
For Each p In VB.Printers
If p.DeviceName = "PDF Printer Name" Then
Set Printer = p
End If
Next
' Print Document Here '
Set Printer = oldPrinter
Note: You will need to ensure distributing and installing isn't in violation the license agreement