I'm creating a form that I don't want anybody to be able to save and modify as their own (but I do want to allow the person to enter in their name at the top). Is their a way of saving something as a PDF and then having a field where info can be entered? There are too many ways to get around the "protect/unprotect" option in Microsoft Word but maybe there is something with Word that I haven't considered. Thanks.

8/31/2006 10:05:39 PM

you can password-protect the protect/unprotect in word

but yeah, you can do it with PDFs - you need the full version of Acrobat that comes with Designer to do this form stuff

8/31/2006 10:39:29 PM

You can bypass the security on PDFs just as easily as Office files. The fact of life is that if you put something up on the internet, they can do pretty much whatever they want with it.

9/1/2006 12:30:36 AM

If you are using Word 2003 (can't speak for the older ones) you can specify the type of encryption to protect the document by. There are a dozen or so options that with a 256 or 512 bit key length, should be pretty darn secure.

AFAIK Word 03's protection scheme hasnt been bypassed yet, the decrypters i've seen have been brute force only.

9/1/2006 12:37:50 AM

PDFs have little to no present security unless they are protected by a third-party plugin.

How are you planning on delivering/distributing this document? Available for download off a website? Network space? Email? Reason I ask, that will help with options available.

9/1/2006 7:25:33 AM

I'm going to have it emailed or downloaded off a website, form fields entered, printed and then returned as a hardcopy. Since there are multiple pages, I wanted there to be a way people could enter in the data (name, etc) at the top and have it on all pages.

I was planning on using a form field in the header so that the info would be repeated at the top of each page, but just found out that you can't do that in Word. Any ideas on how to have the info typed into the form field at the top of the first page applied to all the pages?

9/1/2006 12:15:19 PM

um, that sounds like a good candidate for a "html/ajax frontend and php/mysql backend" form. keeps it all digital and you can error check the form entries while they type the input ... and of course, then you'll already have the info in a database.

of course this means the user can't just download the document and they'll be tied to the internet while they do data entry ... so, taking my suggestion all depends on your main intent and what you expect the users to do.

overall this would create the most secure document for you, esp with active filtering on their submissions. will save you lots of time if you expect a ton of submissions.

9/1/2006 3:34:31 PM

^I agree, my assumption was this was some kind of legal form that has to be signed and dated. If that's not the case, definitely worth going the route gs7 advocates

9/1/2006 3:43:58 PM