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Create Livecycle form that can not be overwritten - (template)

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Level 9

I have forms saved in a central location (folder) on our company network. Is there a way to create a Livecycle form that has Reader extended features enabled and can act as a master template requiring the form to be saved to a different name when saved, protecting the template? (Like a Word .dot)

4 Replies

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Level 4

Good morning,

You could set the file to be read-only via the file properties dialog provided by your operating system. This would disallow changes to be saved to the original.

I think that this may be your only option. I personally cannot think of any way to have a PDF govern itself in such a manner. If I'm not mistaken, even using pre-save logic in formcalc or javascript couldn't prevent a user from saving over the original. PDFs don't tend to let you interrupt a user who wishes to save/print/close them. Then again, I've been amazed by some of the solutions that the experts on this forum have come up with. There are a ton of users here who are pdf-gurus. Hopefully one of them will ave a better solution for you.

- Scott

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Level 9

Thank you past-tense. That's a valid answer and if no one has anything better, I will definitely do that.

Thank you!

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Former Community Member

Scott (past-tense) has the easy answer.  Of course, it does not stop someone from changing the Read Only setting, unless this is on a server and the security settings are used instead of the file's properties.

Another possibility COULD be to use the form's preSave event to chack for the file name and change it if the original template is open.  the problem is that this probably requires a client side script file with a function to chang the file name.  I don't think it can be in a script in the file. It may not even be possible at all.  The preSave event occurs before the file is saved, but cannot be used to stop the file from being saved. The idea would be to make sure the template file name is not used when the file is saved.  Not knowing the preSave event too well, though, I cannot say if changing the name would be applied before the save or not.

The file's top form presave would be something similar to:

if (event.target.documentFileName == "template.pdf")

          {

                    //Change the file name to be saved.

          }

See here for some guidance on setting the file name

: XFA form with button to save file with unique filename

Karl S

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Level 9

I will work on that suggestion, thanks!

-Don