Is it possible to type text into PDF documents?

  • Thread starter Thread starter mookie
  • Start date Start date
I eventually got a working solution.

It turns out, my ancient copy of Acrobat Exchange, does
have Acroform capability. But the documentation doesn't
call it Acroform. What I did, is add invisible boxes
to the document, and if I give the form to someone now,
they can type their particulars into the invisible boxes.
Each box is drawn by hand (the tool doesn't have grids,
so people with shaky hands need not apply).

The limitation is, once I've finished preparing the modified
PDF, and you receive it as a user, if you type into the
document, all you do is print the resulting document.
The text you enter, can't be saved for later. So with
that kind of form, it's mainly so you can print off
a copy with your clean text typed in. I expect that's
more or less what you wanted, but I still consider it
a stupid limitation for a computer tool.

This is a snapshot of me filling out my form, in
preparation for sending it off to the employer. The
print looks similar to this. The silly stuff I typed
in here, disappears forever as soon as I quit Acrobat
Reader. So if I want to keep this for later, I need
to print it off. You can't see the invisible boxes
I inserted, because, well, they're invisible.

http://imageshack.us/a/img197/820/pdw.gif

To make the "o" around the number 6, I used a
relatively large font size, so the "o" would fit
around the number. It took a few tries to get it more
or less centered. Making an "x" line up with the tick
boxes in the form, is a similar pain to do. In some
cases, those line up better if I type in " x".

So if I was the HR person making this form, I'd suffer
a small amount of hair loss, using the Acroform idea.

Paul
 
I eventually got a working solution.

It turns out, my ancient copy of Acrobat Exchange, does
have Acroform capability. But the documentation doesn't
call it Acroform. What I did, is add invisible boxes
to the document, and if I give the form to someone now,
they can type their particulars into the invisible boxes.
Each box is drawn by hand (the tool doesn't have grids,
so people with shaky hands need not apply).

The limitation is, once I've finished preparing the modified
PDF, and you receive it as a user, if you type into the
document, all you do is print the resulting document.
The text you enter, can't be saved for later. So with
that kind of form, it's mainly so you can print off
a copy with your clean text typed in. I expect that's
more or less what you wanted, but I still consider it
a stupid limitation for a computer tool.

This is a snapshot of me filling out my form, in
preparation for sending it off to the employer. The
print looks similar to this. The silly stuff I typed
in here, disappears forever as soon as I quit Acrobat
Reader. So if I want to keep this for later, I need
to print it off. You can't see the invisible boxes
I inserted, because, well, they're invisible.

http://imageshack.us/a/img197/820/pdw.gif

To make the "o" around the number 6, I used a
relatively large font size, so the "o" would fit
around the number. It took a few tries to get it more
or less centered. Making an "x" line up with the tick
boxes in the form, is a similar pain to do. In some
cases, those line up better if I type in " x".

So if I was the HR person making this form, I'd suffer
a small amount of hair loss, using the Acroform idea.

Paul
Click to expand...

Thank you for taking the time to check all that out! What you told me is way
over my head and I don't understand half of it. However in sniffing around in
other directions I found things that might work and that you may or may not be
interested in. In doing a Google search for how to type on pdf I came across
several hopeful options. Since I'm on dial up and have the slowest internet
access in the world it takes 20 minutes to do what most people can probably do
in seconds....that is when I'm lucky and it doesn't just lock down and do
nothing at all. Anyway, from playing around with it the best for me so far has
been at: http://www.pdfescape.com/ where I entered the url of the doc, it
brought it up, and I was able to enter text and circle things, etc. If it's
possible to download that free I might want to do it but haven't put in the time
to find out yet because I went on to look at a few more. At:
http://www.pdffiller.com/ I entered the url again and it said it was 100% done,
but didn't actually bring up the doc like at the first place did so I don't know
if it's any good or not....maybe because of lameness on this computer and
connection. At: http://www.pdfill.com/freewriter.html and:
http://www.iskysoft.us/lp/pdf-editing/?gclid=CNK9z6WSproCFURp7AodK0wAEA
it looks like they have free downloadable programs but I didn't take the loooong
time it would take to try them out with my slow system. There are more too it
seems like but that's as far as I went with it this session, thinking I'd share
what I found with you folks and see if you want to check it out and get back
with me about it. If so I'm interested in what you decide about this stuff, but
if not I sure do thank you people for the time and help you've put into this
already.
 
p.s. The term watermark keeps coming up but I didn't understand the definition I
looked up. Can you give me a simple explanation of what the term means, or what
it sort of means if an actual explanation would be complicated?
 
p.s. The term watermark keeps coming up but I didn't understand the definition I
looked up. Can you give me a simple explanation of what the term means, or what
it sort of means if an actual explanation would be complicated?
Click to expand...

It means they add a blemish to the "Save As" document,
so that you can't hand your printed output to your
prospective employer :-)

At work, we used to place a diagonal "Unofficial Copy"
text string, in red print, right in the middle of
each page of text. That was a form of watermark.

(I hate these... when they prevent you from reading the black text)

http://www.soliddocuments.com/images/slides/createwatermarks_5.png

So the idea there, is to destroy the document so it
can't be used for a practical purpose.

When I used to get the documents with the red colored
"Unofficial Copy" in the center of the page, I would
use my small collection of tools to remove it, then
print off a nice clean copy of the document. The thing
is, in many cases, the watermark interfered enough
with the document, to make the printed copy impossible
to read. (People making the watermark, forgot to make
the body of the watermark transparent.) Which kind of
defeats the purpose of handing someone a PDF in the
first place.

There are other kinds of watermarks. One is used
in modern printers. If a person attempts to print
currency on a color laser printer, the printer places
yellow dots on each print, that indicate the serial
number of the equipment. It's a form of steganography,
a "hiding of information in a sea of data". The dots
are intended to be light enough in color, that a
casual examination won't find them. But if you
know they're present, you can go looking for them.
It allows the Secret Service to track down
a naive person who is printing currency with a
color laser printer.

Similar schemes are used on color photocopy machines.
And photocopiers now, even have hard drives, keeping
a log of what's been done on the machine. So don't
go copying any currency on the color photocopier either,
as it is designed to recognize currency and stop
the copy.

It's even possible these features exist on inkjet
printers. But don't quote me on that. I don't know
if you could do quality currency reproduction on
an inkjet or not :-) The ink would probably run on
too much.

Paul
 
Paul said:
PDF Xchange continues to make me nervous.

When I tried a Pro feature, it didn't add a watermark to my document.
So I don't even get to see how hard it would be to remove the Demo
watermark. I used to remove watermarks from documents at work, just
for fun, so was looking for a challenge.

The program also exhibits some strange behaviors. It almost
looks like it's scanning for something.

I won't be installing this on my main OS, and it'll be staying
in a VM for now, until the VM is chucked.
Click to expand...

I don't know that all PRO trial features in the freeware version will
generate a watermark. Look in its help as it sometimes mentions when it
will add the DEMO watermark for trialing a Pro-only feature. For Peter
and I, we were discussing flattening of comments so they could not
easily be removed later (which doesn't obviate someone laying another
comment atop yours that is blank and flattening the doc to wipe away
your comment).

Did you add a comment to a PDF (use the Typewriter toolbar button)? Did
you then try to flatten it using the entry under the Comments menu
(provided you do not configure PDFxchange Viewer to hide Pro-only
features)? Once you flattened your new comment, did you then *save* the
modified copy back into a file? The watermark shows up when you save
the modified document.

When I use a Pro-only trial feature in the freeware version, I get a
prompt when I go to save the file telling me the DEMO watermark will
appear on each page. The watermark is a black hazard symbol highlighted
by a yellow fringe with "Click to Buy NOW!" and other text inside the
black part of the hazard symbol. The watermark is not applied until you
SAVE the modified .pdf file and after having used a Pro-only feature.

I haven't a clue what you mean by "it's scanning for something." It
does include an OCR function. You'll see an "OCR" button in the File
Toolbar. I haven't used it since OCR has previously been unreliable
even with expensive payware OCR programs. Doesn't seem to work in
scanned docs converted to PDFs which comprises most of my PDFs. I have
a couple that are gov't PDFs and look to be forms but the OCR button
becomes disabled. I have a credit check PDF that was sent to me and
looks like just text but after the OCR completes I didn't see any change
in the document (i.e., nothing changed in the view). Since the idea is
to take something that isn't text (i.e., an image) and find text-looking
portions of it to convert into text, and since it doesn't nothing in my
scanned docs (images) saved into a .pdf file, I don't know what their
OCR is supposed to do or if it even works.
 
VanguardLH said:
I don't know that all PRO trial features in the freeware version will
generate a watermark. Look in its help as it sometimes mentions when it
will add the DEMO watermark for trialing a Pro-only feature. For Peter
and I, we were discussing flattening of comments so they could not
easily be removed later (which doesn't obviate someone laying another
comment atop yours that is blank and flattening the doc to wipe away
your comment).

Did you add a comment to a PDF (use the Typewriter toolbar button)? Did
you then try to flatten it using the entry under the Comments menu
(provided you do not configure PDFxchange Viewer to hide Pro-only
features)? Once you flattened your new comment, did you then *save* the
modified copy back into a file? The watermark shows up when you save
the modified document.

When I use a Pro-only trial feature in the freeware version, I get a
prompt when I go to save the file telling me the DEMO watermark will
appear on each page. The watermark is a black hazard symbol highlighted
by a yellow fringe with "Click to Buy NOW!" and other text inside the
black part of the hazard symbol. The watermark is not applied until you
SAVE the modified .pdf file and after having used a Pro-only feature.

I haven't a clue what you mean by "it's scanning for something." It
does include an OCR function. You'll see an "OCR" button in the File
Toolbar. I haven't used it since OCR has previously been unreliable
even with expensive payware OCR programs. Doesn't seem to work in
scanned docs converted to PDFs which comprises most of my PDFs. I have
a couple that are gov't PDFs and look to be forms but the OCR button
becomes disabled. I have a credit check PDF that was sent to me and
looks like just text but after the OCR completes I didn't see any change
in the document (i.e., nothing changed in the view). Since the idea is
to take something that isn't text (i.e., an image) and find text-looking
portions of it to convert into text, and since it doesn't nothing in my
scanned docs (images) saved into a .pdf file, I don't know what their
OCR is supposed to do or if it even works.
Click to expand...

The program is reading the hard drive a bit too much.

During my first attempt to install the program, it did
an extensive disk search. I shut down that VM, decompressed
a new VM from source (all my previous installed programs gone),
and then the installer behaved better and installed without a
fuss.

While using PDF XChange, I also had an instance where the
interface froze up, dialog was grayed out and it didn't come
back. I had to kill it from Task Manager. Running it again,
it then had no problem.

I don't know what they're doing in there, but I continue
to be unimpressed with how active it is behind the scenes.
Like it's looking for license keys or something.

I want programs that are well behaved, and don't make
an ass of themselves with how clever they are. I can't see
me letting that thing loose on my main OS. It'll be
sitting in the pig pen (VM).

Paul
 
I don't know that all PRO trial features in the freeware version will
generate a watermark. Look in its help as it sometimes mentions when it
will add the DEMO watermark for trialing a Pro-only feature. For Peter
and I, we were discussing flattening of comments so they could not
easily be removed later (which doesn't obviate someone laying another
comment atop yours that is blank and flattening the doc to wipe away
your comment).
Click to expand...
That can be made more difficult by using a password.
Did you add a comment to a PDF (use the Typewriter toolbar button)? Did
you then try to flatten it using the entry under the Comments menu
(provided you do not configure PDFxchange Viewer to hide Pro-only
features)? Once you flattened your new comment, did you then *save* the
modified copy back into a file? The watermark shows up when you save
the modified document.
Click to expand...

On the Toolbar I have the "Save copy as" button - very useful for not
borking the One and Only.
Just added and flattened a comment then printed to PDF with PDF Factory
without saving the original. There's not any (visible) degradation in
quality.
 
The program is reading the hard drive a bit too much.

During my first attempt to install the program, it did
an extensive disk search. I shut down that VM, decompressed
a new VM from source (all my previous installed programs gone),
and then the installer behaved better and installed without a
fuss.

While using PDF XChange, I also had an instance where the
interface froze up, dialog was grayed out and it didn't come
back. I had to kill it from Task Manager. Running it again,
it then had no problem.

I don't know what they're doing in there, but I continue
to be unimpressed with how active it is behind the scenes.
Like it's looking for license keys or something.

I want programs that are well behaved, and don't make
an ass of themselves with how clever they are. I can't see
me letting that thing loose on my main OS. It'll be
sitting in the pig pen (VM).

Paul
Click to expand...

I've been using it for a few years (did a lot of research first - the name
of the company didn't inspire my trust! The devs. etc. are very good in the
forums, addressing and, where possible, quickly fixing problems). Never have
I seen any untoward activity with HDD, CPU or network. Also never had the
issues that you describe.
I'm trying the Editor (v3, effectively) but it doesn't yet have the
functionality of v2.
 
Paul said:
The program is reading the hard drive a bit too much.

During my first attempt to install the program, it did an extensive
disk search. I shut down that VM, decompressed a new VM from source
(all my previous installed programs gone), and then the installer
behaved better and installed without a fuss.

While using PDF XChange, I also had an instance where the interface
froze up, dialog was grayed out and it didn't come back. I had to
kill it from Task Manager. Running it again, it then had no problem.

I don't know what they're doing in there, but I continue to be
unimpressed with how active it is behind the scenes. Like it's
looking for license keys or something.

I want programs that are well behaved, and don't make an ass of
themselves with how clever they are. I can't see me letting that
thing loose on my main OS. It'll be sitting in the pig pen (VM).
Click to expand...

From where are you downloading the program?

Do NOT use the sponsored links at the top of a Google search. Googles
sells adwords to whomever wants to buy them. Google does not mandate
whomever buys an adword has the rights to use it. Competing company B
can buy adwords that references company A. Users that do a Google
search may see what looks like links to company A but those are
deceptive adwords bought by company B to lure you to their site. Tis
another reason why I don't use Google because they deliberately don't
enforce restrictions on misdirection using adwords. They just want the
money selling the adwords to whomever wants to buy them.

At many download sites (e.g., CNet's download.com and Softpedia.com),
and if you don't have adblocking enabled, you may see multiple
"Download" buttons on a web page there. They might make the biggest one
that draws your attention lead you to some other product.

Starting at http://www.tracker-software.com/product/pdf-xchange-viewer
shows you a list of their download links. Get the program from where
they choose to host their files.

I don't know from where you got the installer but the symptoms you
described I have never experienced or even heard as experienced by other
users of PDFxchange Viewer. After I load the program, whether before or
after having it load a .pdf file, it doesn't do any disk access
thereafter.

You might want to get a file monitor, like SysInternals FileMon (which
they later rolled together with RegMon to replace with Process Monitor).
That would let you know if all that disk activity was generated by
PDFXchange Viewer or something else.
 
It means they add a blemish to the "Save As" document,
so that you can't hand your printed output to your
prospective employer :-)

At work, we used to place a diagonal "Unofficial Copy"
text string, in red print, right in the middle of
each page of text. That was a form of watermark.

(I hate these... when they prevent you from reading the black text)

http://www.soliddocuments.com/images/slides/createwatermarks_5.png

So the idea there, is to destroy the document so it
can't be used for a practical purpose.

When I used to get the documents with the red colored
"Unofficial Copy" in the center of the page, I would
use my small collection of tools to remove it, then
print off a nice clean copy of the document. The thing
is, in many cases, the watermark interfered enough
with the document, to make the printed copy impossible
to read. (People making the watermark, forgot to make
the body of the watermark transparent.) Which kind of
defeats the purpose of handing someone a PDF in the
first place.

There are other kinds of watermarks. One is used
in modern printers. If a person attempts to print
currency on a color laser printer, the printer places
yellow dots on each print, that indicate the serial
number of the equipment. It's a form of steganography,
a "hiding of information in a sea of data". The dots
are intended to be light enough in color, that a
casual examination won't find them. But if you
know they're present, you can go looking for them.
It allows the Secret Service to track down
a naive person who is printing currency with a
color laser printer.

Similar schemes are used on color photocopy machines.
And photocopiers now, even have hard drives, keeping
a log of what's been done on the machine. So don't
go copying any currency on the color photocopier either,
as it is designed to recognize currency and stop
the copy.

It's even possible these features exist on inkjet
printers. But don't quote me on that. I don't know
if you could do quality currency reproduction on
an inkjet or not :-) The ink would probably run on
too much.

Paul
Click to expand...

Thankyou for the good explanation. Now that you told me I'm familiar with seeing
them and have even noticed a few on other things since you explained it.

Did you check out any of the editting programs I mentioned in the post I made
before the last one you replied to? If so, do you like any of them?
 
Thankyou for the good explanation. Now that you told me I'm familiar with seeing
them and have even noticed a few on other things since you explained it.

Did you check out any of the editting programs I mentioned in the post I made
before the last one you replied to? If so, do you like any of them?
Click to expand...

I haven't had a chance to try them yet.

http://www.pdfescape.com/ where I entered the url of the doc, it
brought it up, and I was able to enter text and circle things, etc.
If it's possible to download that free I might want to do it but
haven't put in the time to find out yet because I went on to look
at a few more. At: http://www.pdffiller.com/ I entered the url again
and it said it was 100% done, but didn't actually bring up the doc
like at the first place did so I don't know if it's any good or not....
maybe because of lameness on this computer and connection.
At: http://www.pdfill.com/freewriter.html and:
http://www.iskysoft.us/lp/pdf-editing/?gclid=CNK9z6WSproCFURp7AodK0wAEA

Paul
 
Paul said:
I haven't had a chance to try them yet.

http://www.pdfescape.com/ where I entered the url of the doc, it
brought it up, and I was able to enter text and circle things, etc.
If it's possible to download that free I might want to do it but
haven't put in the time to find out yet because I went on to look
at a few more. At: http://www.pdffiller.com/ I entered the url again
and it said it was 100% done, but didn't actually bring up the doc
like at the first place did so I don't know if it's any good or not....
maybe because of lameness on this computer and connection.
At: http://www.pdfill.com/freewriter.html and:
http://www.iskysoft.us/lp/pdf-editing/?gclid=CNK9z6WSproCFURp7AodK0wAEA

Paul
Click to expand...

http://www.pdfescape.com/

Worked fine. Did the Save and Download after editing, and it saved the
edits OK.

*******

http://www.pdffiller.com

Lame interface. Couldn't load a doc.

*******

http://www.pdfill.com/freewriter.html

That one appears to be some sort of printer driver,
which would take too long to test.

*******

The iskysoft.us one, I downloaded, and at least the virustotal scan
is clean. It would take time to test that in a VM, for safety.

https://www.virustotal.com/en/file/...6465f122a033c4fb690faed38bb4ca0ac48/analysis/

For casual usage, your first one looks like a winner!

Paul
 
I downloaded a job application in PDF format and if possible would like to fill
it out nice and pretty using the computer. For a second I thought it would be
possible because when I clicked in a space with the cursor the blinking line
thing came up like it would be able to start entering text, but tapping keys on
the keyboard didn't do anything. Also I found that the blinking thing can be put
in some spots, but not in every place I tried to put it. Is there a way to do
it, and if so how much freedom is there regarding font size and style?

Thanks,
Mookie
Click to expand...

There are several types of PDF files:
ftp://ftp.scansoft.com/products/pdfconverter/whitepapers/WP_WhatisPDF.pdf

Normal,
Image (cannot type into that!)
True
Wrapped
PDF Image + Text
PDF-wrapped TIFF

....
 
I downloaded a job application in PDF format and if possible would like to fill
it out nice and pretty using the computer. For a second I thought it would be
possible because when I clicked in a space with the cursor the blinking line
thing came up like it would be able to start entering text, but tapping keys on
the keyboard didn't do anything. Also I found that the blinking thing can be put
in some spots, but not in every place I tried to put it. Is there a way to do
it, and if so how much freedom is there regarding font size and style?
Click to expand...

You should ask the author of the PDF to make changes for you!

PDFs were supposed to be **PUBLISHED** documents. Readers should not
have the ability to change them!! :)

--
@~@ Remain silent. Nothing from soldiers and magicians is real!
/ v \ Simplicity is Beauty! May the Force and farces be with you!
/( _ )\ (Fedora 19 i686) Linux 3.11.4-201.fc19.i686
^ ^ 18:48:01 up 2 days 14:11 0 users load average: 0.00 0.01 0.05
ä¸å€Ÿè²¸! ä¸è©é¨™! ä¸æ´äº¤! ä¸æ‰“交! ä¸æ‰“劫! ä¸è‡ªæ®º! è«‹è€ƒæ…®ç¶œæ´ (CSSA):
http://www.swd.gov.hk/tc/index/site_pubsvc/page_socsecu/sub_addressesa
 
Mr. Man-wai Chang said:
You should ask the author of the PDF to make changes for you!

PDFs were supposed to be **PUBLISHED** documents. Readers should not have the ability
to change them!! :)
Click to expand...

Almost, but today some PDF files are FORMS intended to be filled in by 'readers'.
 
Almost, but today some PDF files are FORMS intended to be filled in by
'readers'.
Click to expand...

I guess that's what made secured PDFs vulnerable... :)

--
@~@ Remain silent. Nothing from soldiers and magicians is real!
/ v \ Simplicity is Beauty! May the Force and farces be with you!
/( _ )\ (Fedora 19 i686) Linux 3.11.4-201.fc19.i686
^ ^ 22:27:02 up 4 days 12:21 0 users load average: 0.00 0.01 0.05
ä¸å€Ÿè²¸! ä¸è©é¨™! ä¸æ´äº¤! ä¸æ‰“交! ä¸æ‰“劫! ä¸è‡ªæ®º! è«‹è€ƒæ…®ç¶œæ´ (CSSA):
http://www.swd.gov.hk/tc/index/site_pubsvc/page_socsecu/sub_addressesa
 
Mr. Man-wai Chang said:
I guess that's what made secured PDFs vulnerable... :)
Click to expand...

It was supporting Javascript (can be disabled) which is used to validate
that input is the correct type, like only numbers going into a telephone
field. Adobe decided to allow PDFs to carry a payload. That is you can
attach another file to a PDF, and it doesn't have to be another PDF
file. It could be executable. On loading a PDF, there is a "feature"
of to run a "launch" action.

In PDFxchange Viewer, I configured it as follows:
- Disable Javascript. I have yet to deal with a PDF with forms or those
that mandate validation of entry into fields. YMMV.
- Disallow any non-PDF attachments.
- Disable launch actions.

These were available as user-configurable options in PDFxchange Viewer
long before they showed up in Adobe's Reader. I believe (but don't use
so cannot substantiate) that Adobe finally got around to adding security
options for these features.
 
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