Converting editable to non-editable fields using Ghostscript

Converting editable to non-editable fields using Ghostscript

Converting editable to non-editable fields using Ghostscript

Making a PDF form non-editable means locking the PDF file so nothing can be modified in its contents. Here’s how you can do it in Adobe Acrobat Professional if you have this. Start Adobe Acrobat Professional then load the PDF file you want to convert. Fill out the necessary fields in the form. When you are finished, click File, select “Save a Copy”, and then save your file.

Close the current form but don’t save it because it will overwrite the original file. After that, open the PDF file you just saved. Next, click Advanced then go to Security then select Show Security Properties. In Document Properties window, click Security. Set Security Method to Password Security. In Password Security Settings window, check “Restrict Editing & Printing of the document”.

Set the password to lock the file. In Printing Allowed, select “high resolution”. Finally, click OK and then Save. And that’s it. The PDF form is now non-editable unless you have the password. On the other hand, if you want to use Ghostscript to crop a PDF file, you can follow the steps in the previous post.

In addition to the previous post, the “^” symbol or string will not work on PDFs with predefined /CropBox values. One method to go around it is to change the /CropBox string to /cROPBoX for all the pages. This change in the case of the string effectively disarms the cropbox setting.