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All / most PDF forms used by the Australian Defence Force are like this - I suspect it’s because it’s all tied into the identity / ability to digitally sign the forms.

It’s very frustrating when you send someone (externally) a PDF and it required them to install Acrobat.

Or maybe it’s just Adobe trying to take the P out of PDF…



The PDF format supports all sorts of insane extensions only implemented in Acrobat and only used by governments and large enterprises.


When I get forms like this I just dump them to jpg, fill them in an a paint program and zip them back up and send them as static images.


That doesn't work. You can't even view the PDF without Acrobat. (There's an example linked elsewhere in this thread.)


They may not be accepted by the form issuer if they have a process to pull the text out of specific fields in the PDF. I have run into that before. They are not just looking at the document but processing it.




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