Protected fields cannot be parsed

[tadobeee]

I have a field in a PDF I created in LiveCycle that is protected.  The reason it is protected is to remove it from the tab order, since it is an automatically calculated field.

Unfortunately, our back-end server side parsing program will no longer parse data from that field.  That program throws an error when it reaches that field.

Any suggestions for ways around this?  Is either (1) a way to allow this field to be parsed even though it is protected, or (2) a way to remove this field from the tab order without protecting the field?

Thanks in advance for any help.

[djaknow]

You could set the fields back to "open" on the pre-save event using the script

this.access = "open";

When the form is saved, the fields would no longer be protected so I'm not sure if this is the best solution for you but I think it would work so you could at least test the form and verify your integration.

[tadobeee]

Unfortunately, this form (which is a long legal/technical form) will almost certainly be saved by the users before they even get to that field.  So, although that sounds like it might work in some cases, it probably won't work here.

[djaknow]

If I'm not mistaken, the pre-save event fires on all fields when the user saves the form so that shouldn't be a problem. The problem would be if the user saves the form and then goes back into the form, which means that on the docReady event you'd also need a script to set the fields back to protected so that they can't save the form, re-open it, and then change the calculated fields.

[Former Community Member]

Can you describe what is happening when you say the back end parses the form and connot handle the protected field?

Paul

[tadobeee]

Actually, it is working ok.  It had been failing on one of the first fields (which was one of the few that we had made protected).  We thought it was because we changed it to protected, but it looks like this file got corrupted somehow.  I reverted to an earlier version, updated with the lost changes, and now everything is working fine.

Sorry for my confusion.