Interactive forms and Security

Until you are through authoring the PDF including adding form fields and actions, do not apply any security or rights. These are the very last things to do after you make your backup copy.

George, Thanks for your reply. I've never tried to apply security until I have finished with the form. I apply password-encrypt protection, and then try to distribute the form and get the error message. Then, I've tried to distribute the form first, and apply security to the "distributed" version, Acrobat won't allow it. Any other ideas? Thanks!

First select the security settings you want but do not save the file. Then distribute it.

George, Thanks for your reply. I took your suggestion, but unfortunately Acrobat 10 requires that you save the document with security settings (password encrytion) before it will continue with Distribute. And then, of course, after saving I get the above error message.

Any other ideas, anyone? I look forward to trying them! Thanks

That's odd. I'll be able to try it out on Acrobat 10 later...

Don,

I'm getting the same as you with Acrobat 10.0.0. I would be inclined to think this is a bug, and am not yet prepared to install the recent update to find out if it has been fixed. It seems to preclude the possibility of distributing forms with password security applied, but it's possible we could be missing something. In any case, it's not the way Acrobat 9 behaves.

George, Thanks for all your help ... I REALLY appreciate your help. I'm on version 10.0.1, the latest version. It's nice to know that I am at least doing things the "right way". I think that my next step will be to contact Acrobat tech support. Thanks again.

Hello. I have the Acrobat 9 Pro and I'm having similar problems. I took your advice, George, and distributed my form without any security settings. However, I don't want my recipients to be able to copy any part the form, and without security, they can do just that? Do you have any suggestions anyone? Thank you!

I did not suggest that you don't apply security. You should add security, then add the usage rights, then save.

I'm sorry, George. I didn't mean to sound like I was putting words in your mouth. What I meant is that I tried to distribute several forms several ways: with security and extended reader features; with security but no extended reader features; and with no security and no entended reader features (Acrobat tells me it extends reader features whether I specify to do it or not). I used the "manually collect responses in my email inbox" option since I couldn't get Acrobat.com to work, and I keep getting the same messages: "Acrobat is not able to create a usable responses file from the returned form because the form restricts needed operations. Failed to create a response file at the location… Form distribution is aborted" The problems is that I don't know what needed operations I am somehow restricting!

I've read in another thread that someone was having distribution problems and Adobe told her that the problem was with her Word file when it was converted to pdf, but she didn't know what they did. They just fixed it. My forms are both scanned and converted and just converted from Word. I'm beginning to think that I have the same problem she did.

Do you think I'm missing anything else? Thank you for your time.

No problem, I see how I could have misread your post.

What will work is if you set up the form with the security that you want, Reader-enable it, and send the file to the folks you want to send it back to you. Once you've received them all, use Acrobat to create a data file containing the form data. This bypasses the whole response file mechanism, but at least it will work. I doubt it has anything to do with the Word source document.

It would be interesting to see what Adobe technical support has to say, as this seems to be a rather glaring bug. Though I still have a nagging feeling we're missing something...

Thanks, George, I guess that's the only way for now I'm going to be able to send these fillable forms. I'm going to contact Adobe at some point down the road, as I've wasted too much time trying to get this to work and have fallen way behind on my work. When I get it resolved, I'll be sure to post the answer to save other people the hassle I've experienced.

I'm afraid so…
This is a so silly and unexpected behavior!

A workaround is to Sign or Certificate the PDF before "distribute", this prevent from any change but it can't prevent copy-paste.

I'll do some more testing and report it as a bug if I can't get it to work.