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Invoice created. How to edit once and then lock it from being edited?

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Former Community Member
Hello,

I just started using LiveCycle the other day when I purchased CS4.



I created a custom invoice for my billing using text fields and numeric fields. This works fine and it looks good.



When I create a PDF from LiveCycle it has the fields that I can input my amounts into, text, and so forth.



How do I, once I edit the PDF lock it so that the clients I am sending the invoice to, can not edit it but only print it? I see this functionality only within LiveCycle itself, requiring a password to edit, however I would prefer to just edit the PDF myself (since I am the only one doing the billing) and then just lock it somehow rather than putting in a password each time.



Any ideas? I couldn't seem to find what I wanted here or in the help files.



Thanks
30 Replies

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Level 4
You can do this by using the signature field and in the Object > Signature tab there is a check box called "Lock Fields After Signing". I don't know how to do this outside of the signature though.

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Former Community Member
There is code you can write to lock down all objects on the form. If you post your email address I will send you a sample.

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Level 2
Hi Paul! my email id would be ajay.yada@gmail.com, can u send me the smaple...??

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Level 2
Paul,



I would very much appreciate this sample code, if possible. Thanks.

dfulmer AT cox DOT net

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Former Community Member
Hi Paul,



Sample for me too?



lucpiccard@hotmail.com



thank you

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Level 4
A related topic. I've been using a script that Paul provided that, among other things, makes all the fields read-only on a contract-type document when the receiver opens the docuemnt to prevent changes to the field values. Recently, an unscruplulous customer used Acrobat to modfy the text-portions of the document and changed the terms of the deal without informing us that they had done so. Since folks were relying on a pdf as a "secure" document that would be difficult to edit, the contract changes weren't caught until the last minute. The customer indicated it was deliberately an attempt to make changes they hoped we'd not catch. So . . .



Is there a way after setting the fields to read-only when the receiver opens the document to programmaticlaly lock the entire document so all the receiver can do is print it out?



We "fired" the customer . . . .

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Former Community Member
You can use a digital signature to lock down the document. The signature will create a hache value of the form and it will be compared ech time the doc is opened. If a change to the doc is made (unscrupulously) then the signature will be invalid and you will know that the doc has been tampered with. You can even compare the two docs to find out where the change was made.

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Level 4
Thanks. I'll have to "play" with digital signature to see how that works.



It's a jungle out there . . . .

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Former Community Member
Hello Paul, can you send me a sample too?

info@erkwerk.nl

Thanks in advance

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Former Community Member
Hi Paul,



I have a similar need. Could you send the code to desaipr@dslextreme.com



TIA.

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Former Community Member
here to, ted.goodridge at realpage dot com

Thanks Paul

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Former Community Member
It would not make sense out of context unless you were intimate with the XFA object model.

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Level 4
b Circling back on messages 9 and 10.



I've spent some time reading up on digital signatures and I'm still not sure how to implement, or whether it can do what I'm looking for it to do. We have a form that is completed by a sales person taking an order using Reader. After the form is completed, I used Paul's script on a button click event to change all the form fields to "read-only" and to clean up some formatting. The sales person can then save the form through Reader extensions and can email it to the customer. Whne the form is opened, Paul's script runs again on the doc:ready initialize event to present the form to the customer in the read-only version, which the customer can then print, sign and return to us (the finance folks say we've got have the paper copy -- :-(). Unfortunately we've now had instances where a customer will open the form in Acrobat (not Reader) and edit the text portions of form, and those edits are not easily seen.



What I've like to do is, as part of the button click event, have the some function available, so that, if I understand the digital signature function correctly, if the customer edits the form using Acrobat, some sort of warning is visible on the document so when we receive the printed form back, we know it's been altered.



If I can make the paper version work, I think I can move folks to the next step of e-sig and paperless forms over the Web, but I've got to restore trust in pdf as a secure medium first. I don't want to go back to Word forms (Yuck!) which some folks think are more secure after this incident.



Thanks for everyone's thoughts and help.