Law Technology

Flatten Form Fields and Comment using a FREE Acrobat X Action

By Rick Borstein

Flattening is the process of moving editable information— form field data and comments— into the main document layer so that it cannot be edited or changed.

At left, below is an illustration of editable form and comments elements. After flattening (right), the appearance of the elements remains, but they are no lonager editable.

Many folks simply print the document to the Adobe PDF print driver to flatten a document. However, that process takes several steps and eliminates bookmarks and other information.

Why would I need to Flatten a document?

Here are a few reasons that you might want to flatten a document:

• To ensure that comments are printed
• To prevent someone from changing the text inside a PDF form
• To lock your stamp on the document

To make the flattening process easier, you can use a FREE Acrobat X Action to flatten your document.

Acrobat X Flatten Action

The Acrobat X File Name Stamper Action automates the process of flattening the document. Just open your Actions Panel and click!

How do I get the File Name Stamper Action?

You can get the Filename Stamper Action over on the Actions Exchange on AcrobatUsers.com,

Alternately, you can download it direct below.

The PDF document you download below includes:

1. Installation and use instructions
2. Action (embedded in the PDF)

Enjoy!

Flatten_Doc.pdf (753K) Hint: Right-click and Choose Save Target As . . . to save to your desktop You will need Acrobat X Pro to run the Action

Full post as published by Acrobat for Legal Professionals on February 14, 2011 (boomark / email).