Make a writer document partially editable

[helpless_doozy]

Hello,

I’d like to know what is the better way to make a document that has certain parts locked for modification, allowing only a few blanks to be filled in. For example, think of a job application form where the applicant can enter details like name, email, etc., without being able to modify the rest of the document (like, say, the salary compensation amount ).

Lately, I’ve been thinking about cases like this where PDF seems to be the standard format for this particular kind of task. However, I’ve always been under the impression that PDF was not designed for editing documents. And despite many tools being available today that make this possible, it seems that different tools achieve this differently and are not always compatible with each other.

Hopefully someone can help me clear this… misconception? Thanks!

[ajlittoz]

What you request is called a form. This is not a “primary” Writer document. My definition of “primary” document is one containing only text which is managed (formatting, line wrap, layout, page distribution, …) automatically by Writer.

An editable form has extra “boxes”, the contents of which is not manipulated by Writer (notably because it is filled-in after Writer has output it). These “boxes” are manually inserted by the designer as form controls. They are special types of drawing objects.

Drawing objects are alien to text. This means that interaction between them and text must be explicitly specified so that Writer knows how to either ignore them (thus overwriting them which is nice for watermarks) or how to flow text around them. Unfortunately, you can’t apply styles (e.g. frame styles) so that they all share the same positioning properties. You must handle them individually.

They can however be anchored to some paragraph/character or be considered as a character, so that they move with the paragraph when you edit your document.

So, your job sums up to creating fixed text as a standard document and attach (anchor) form controls like text boxes to the relevant paragraphs/items in fixed text.

Your fixed text will be protected when you export the document as PDF. When you File>Export>Export as PDF, don’t forget to tick Create PDF form option in General tab of the dialog.

[helpless_doozy]

Hi, thank you for the quick reply!

Yes, this is indeed what I was looking for, there are so many features that is sometimes hard to find the right tool for the job. Now that I know what to look for, I’ll take a closer look and practice a bit more with it.

One final question, though: is this a feature of Libre Office Writer, or can I expect it to work with other suites and formats? For example, if I use OpenOffice, Word, etc.

[ajlittoz]

LibreOffice is a fork of OpenOffice but OO seems to be now in a dormant state (or at least much less active than LO). It should work the same or so.

I don’t know for Word because I dropped using it for decades now. Check that when you export to PDF in other suites there is an option to generate forms (but this will depend on how the suite inserts and translates form controls).

[helpless_doozy]

I will give it a try, then. Cheers