PDF fields printing despite being set to "Visible but doesn't print"

[JenBva]

Hello all!

We have some PDFs that we've had for quite a while.  They have some fields with instructions on them -- these are set to be visible but to not print.  This has worked almost flawlessly until recently.  The errors before were out of date, old versions of Reader.

However, now it seems we get these forms back much more often with the instructions printed.  I have verified that the settings are still correct in the PDFs themselves.  We haven't changed them (last edited in Adobe Acrobat XI) so I don't know why we'd have a surge of issues as of late.  (Unless a new browser add-in has disabled this feature?)

If I know what's causing this, I can add to the instructions or find a new way to display them so that this doesn't happen, but I can't track it down.  I try to get information on what our clients are using when this happens, but they don't generally know and I don't have direct access to them to walk them through finding it out.

Thanks for any help!

Jen

[try67 · Accepted solution]

(Unless a new browser add-in has disabled this feature?)

My money would be on that. Ask the users how (and where) they are opening the files... It's most likely inside of a browser window, or using non-Adobe software.

I would include a large, red warning text on the first page that warns against opening the file inside a browser window, and then hide it with a script when the file is opened using Adobe Acrobat/Reader. That might help mitigate the problem.

Alternatively, send the files inside an archive (Zip file), so they won't open automatically inside a browser... It's an extra step for the users to unpack them, but it would help solve this issue.