How do you flatten a pdf form on mountain lion so you can send it to a windows user?
MacBook Pro, OS X Mountain Lion (10.8.2)
gwshep wrote:
How do you flatten a pdf form on mountain lion so you can send it to a windows user?
I simply save as a .pdf and send it to Windows users who can open them just fine, so you may need to explain a bit further.
Cheers
Pete
Do a 'SAVE AS' (don't use save), that will flatten the PDF.
"Flatten" is the term used to describe changing a PDF "form" ( wherein there are fields that can be filled in within the application itself) to a plain static PDF file. Preview allows Mac users to fill in PDF forms as desiged but if you need to send them to a Windows user , they will have difficulty reading the populated fields.
The best work around that I have found for the issue is to do the following:
1) Complete the fileds in the PDF form and save the document.
2) Export the document to a TIFF file format and save that verion of the document
3) Open the TIFF file in Preview and use the Print function to store the file as a PDF.
The final product is a "Flattened" PDF that is static and will allow Windows users to view without difficulty.
In Preview, Save as just duplicates the form with the active fields still in place. This does work if you have Acrobat though.
Your right, Preview doesn't flatten a pdf. If you hold down the option key... Menu... File... there is as SAVE AS option in Preview. Still doesn't work...
I know Adobe Acrobat Professional ($$$) can do do this... I don't know if the free version can do this...
Go to Print, then click on PDF on the bottom right, and "Save as a PDF". This will flatten the file, so that people cannot make changes.
How do you flatten a pdf form on mountain lion so you can send it to a windows user?
