Validating Form/Printing Specific Fields

You cannot disable print at runtime. But you can validate fields and let the user know that the form is not complete. There is an "WillPrint" example at www.pdfscripting.com that displays a watermark on the form if the fields are not completely filled out before printing.

Thom Parker
The source for PDF Scripting Info
[url=http://www.pdfScripting.com]pdfscripting.com[/url]

The Acrobat JavaScript Reference, Use it Early and Often
[url=http://www.adobe.com/devnet/acrobat/javascript.php]http://www.adobe.com/devnet/acrobat/javascript.php[/url]

I don't think a watermark will work in this situation. BTW I couldn't find the example you refer to--WillPrint. I thought it was under your free content and not paid material. I wish I had $139 to sign up for the premium membership on your site but alas I do not. Is there something else I can do such as work in form designer to solve my problem? We are trying to prevent end users from printing forms that are blank or incomplete.

It's not in the free content, it's a "WillPrint" example file, which requires the premium membership. I'm afraid that neither forms technology, AcroForms or LiveCycle, is going to help you in this area. Preventing printing just isn't a feasible solution. What you can do is to alert the user. Both technologies have pre-print events, so you can do a form level validation and then let the user know if something is not right. That's why I like the watermark idea. If the user prints out an incorrect form it has a big Red "Not Valid" printed accross it.

Thom Parker
The source for PDF Scripting Info
[url=http://www.pdfScripting.com]pdfscripting.com[/url]

The Acrobat JavaScript Reference, Use it Early and Often
[url=http://www.adobe.com/devnet/acrobat/javascript.php]http://www.adobe.com/devnet/acrobat/javascript.php[/url]

Thanks again for responding. Can I validate form fields only within Acrobat or will I need to do it within Forms Designer?

Both forms technologies provide several events that can be used to validate form field input, including of course the Validate event, which is available in both, and used to validate individual fields at the time they are filled in. Whole form validatation is usually performed by the form submit script, or in your case, by the pre-print event. You could also use a calculation event on a hidden field to validate the form in realtime, but this strategy could also cause performance problems. Depends on how big the form is and how many calculations it has running.

Thom Parker
The source for PDF Scripting Info
[url=http://www.pdfScripting.com]pdfscripting.com[/url]

The Acrobat JavaScript Reference, Use it Early and Often
[url=http://www.adobe.com/devnet/acrobat/javascript.php]http://www.adobe.com/devnet/acrobat/javascript.php[/url]