Can I create an interactive PDF without distributing it?

[Former Community Member]

Hi guys,

I am very new to this and I have been asked by the development team here at work to play around and create a form. The idea behind this is that we want to be able to create an interactive PDF form that can be saved without uploading it to anywhere by one of our users (as they may not have access to the internet when they are filling out the form). At a later stage the user will need to upload the PDF into our system which will read the form's content and upload that data to the database. Our system is a Java web based back office system.

Likewise - we will also need to pre-populate data into the form if it is present in our database when the form is downloaded for use.

So I am basically looking for some way to change the security settings on the PDF. I know it is possible but I cannot see how to do it and I cannot find any help on how to do it and it's driving me completely insane!

[Niall_O_Donovan · Accepted solution]

Hi,

You can do this in LC Designer, but I strongly recommend that you have a look at our summary of restrictions depending on how you deploy your form:

It is available here: https://acrobat.com/#d=3lGJZAZuOmk8h86HCWyJKg and here: http://cookbooks.adobe.com/post_Using_LiveCycle_Forms_in_Acrobat_and_Reader-16518.html

You can send out a form, but if the users have Reader they will not be able to save data that they fill in. They will be able to submit the data, but only as xml.

If you reader enable the form to allow users with Reader to save data, then data connections is turned off.

Good luck,

Niall