PDFs: overriding "You cannot save data typed into this form"?

[Chris Mohler]

On Tue, Jul 28, 2009 at 2:18 PM, Adam Funk<a24061 at ducksburg.com> wrote:
> On 2009-07-28, Chris Mohler wrote:
>
>> On Tue, Jul 28, 2009 at 1:45 PM, Adam Funk<a24061 at ducksburg.com> wrote:
>>> I find it very irritating when PDFs are configured so that acroread
>>> says "You cannot save data typed into this form." and tells you to
>>> print it out if you want an extra copy.  Does anyone know how to hack
>>> the PDF to override this, or can anyone recommend a tool that ignores
>>> that flag?
>>
>> IIRC, you can turn off the nag message in the prefs somewhere, but
>> Adobe wants you to purchase Acrobat to save forms with data.  Printing
>> to PDF would work, but as Raskae mentioned, the resulting PDF would no
>> longer have editable forms...
>
> Adobe doesn't block the save-data facility in general (IRS tax forms
> can be saved with data and re-opened).  I think the PDF creator has
> decided to set the obnoxious flag.

OK - how about (untested):

pdftk input.pdf allow FillIn output output.pdf

However, if it's password-protected I doubt that will work.  In that
case pdfcrack is your friend ;)  I always start with digits first -
you'd be surprised at how many times the pw is just numbers or else
part of the filename... (and no, I'm not doing anything nefarious -
folks often want me to edit or modify a document/logo, but they no
longer have the source doc - just the PDF, which was locked by the
original designer)

HTH,
Chris