Adobe Acrobat

My first post!

I am trying to convert filled-in Acrobat8 dynamic forms (PDF1.7 version) to PDF1.4 version without user intervention in Windows. Basically flattening the PDF (removing interactivity). I have lots of them and using the Acrobat 8 UI is not practical.

The solution should mimic the way the Acrobat 8 "Adobe PDF" printer works:
File->Print...->Adobe PDF->OK. It should change the "Adobe PDF" settings to: "Adobe PDF Output Folder"=folderName and disable "View Adobe PDF results".

Here is the description of the "Adobe PDF" printer:
Use these settings to create Adobe PDF documents suitable for reliable viewing and printing of business documents. Created PDF documents can be opened with Acrobat and Adobe Reader 5.0 and later.

Could someone point me in the right direction to make this happen: Acrobat API; 3rd party tools; etc? I haven't found much useful documentation either.

Your responses are urgently needed!

Thanks, Greg

2007-11-07 04:09:13

lkassuba

Registered: Jun 28 2007

Posts: 3636

I would not recommend re-printing your PDF files to PDF again. There are many things within a PDF that cannot be represented by Postscript, which means that all this data will be lost. For more information you can visit Leonard's blog on this at:
http://www.acrobatusers.com/blogs/leonardr/2006/10/06/why-refrying-a-pdf-is-evil/

One option would be to use a Batch Sequence on your forms to flatten the form fields (Advanced --> Document Processing --> Batch Processing. You can create a new sequence and edit the Preflight sequence to:
- Flatten form fields
- Compatible with Acrobat 3

Lori Kassuba is an AUC Expert and Community Manager for AcrobatUsers.com.

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Designer8 Forms batch conversion to PDF1.4