Tuesday, December 13, 2011

Acrobat -- Validate Required Fields Before Printing or Saving


Direct purchase using PayPal ($40 only)!

If you have a form that contain a set of required fields, they are only useful when the user wants to submit the form back to you. But what if you want to use the required feature of these fields when the form is printed as well? Or when the user tries to save it? Until now you couldn't, but with this script it becomes possible.

After running this script on a file, if someone tries to print it without filling in all the required fields, they will receive an error message and the form will print without any of the data in it. The same can be done when the file is saved.
Important: This tool won't prevent the file from being printed or saved entirely. It will just make sure it doesn't print/save with the partial data in it.

Sample files are available here.

For example, here's a standard form with some required fields:


When the user tries to print the form without filling in all the required fields, they receive this message:


The printed form is blank, but the data they already filled-in is not lost! They can continue editing the form, and when all the fields are filled-in properly, the form will print as usual.

If you have any questions regarding this tool, you can contact me directly.

12 comments:

LifeIsACelebration said...

Hi, can you share a sample PDF with the above mentioned functionality. Thank you!

LifeIsACelebration said...

Hi, Can you share a sample PDF with the above functionality ?
Thanks!

Gilad D. (try67) said...

Feel free to contact me privately to get a sample file...

Luigi Salerni said...

may I have a sample file, please?

Unknown said...

Hello,
I want to make sure that this is the right script for what I'm trying to accomplish before I ask my company to spend the money on something. This code will prevent the document from being saved or printed with any data in the fillable fields if any required field is left blank essentially saving and/or printing the document blank? There is no way to by pass it or circumvent it (for example, several of the individuals I work with keep opening the PDFs in Edge because they haven't downloaded Reader [it is a battle that I'm fighting...])?

Gilad D. (try67) said...

Correct. However, I can't guarantee it will work if opened in a non-Adobe application. Also disabling JavaScript will cause it to stop working. There's nothing I can do about that.

Unknown said...

Hi there, I sent you an email earlier but will this script work on check boxes that aren't selected? I have multiple selections and it's quite complex.

Gilad D. (try67) said...

I've replied by email.

Unknown said...

Hi, I would like to have a copy of this, please.

Gilad D. (try67) said...

You can get a copy by buying it...

Tony Guerry said...

Is this still useable in 2023?
I have this need.

Gilad D. (try67) said...

@Tony Guerry

Sure is!