Convert a LiveCycle Form back to an Acrobat Form

PDF Forms that were saved with Adobe LiveCycle cannot be programatically filled and flattened using most API's, like ActivePDF. However, you can convert your LiveCycle PDF form back into a static PDF.

1. Open the form in LiveCycle and save it as Adobe Static PDF form. (Example using Acrobat X Pro)

2. Download PDFTK http://www.pdflabs.com/tools/pdftk-the-pdf-toolkit/

3. Remove extra XML data with the following command line. I copied the creditApplication.pdf file to the same folder.

"pdftk creditApplication.pdf output test.pdf drop_xfa"

4. Now you can open the form in Acrobat and rename the forms fields. By default, the conversion might append form[0] stuff to the field names, so I rename them.

5. Save the new PDF using "Save As". Choose "Adobe PDF Files, Optimized (*.pdf)" and in the optimizer window, make it compatible with Acrobat 4.0 and later.

6. You now have a form fillable PDF that you can use programatically and will flatten properly.

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