PDFBox: How to “flatten” a PDF-form?

Question

How do I \"flatten\" a PDF-form (remove the form-field but keep the text of the field) with PDFBox?

Same question was answered here:

a quick

Answer 1

Solution to flattening acroform AND retaining the form field values using pdfBox:

• see solution at https://mail-archives.apache.org/mod_mbox/pdfbox-users/201604.mbox/%3C3BC7E352-9447-4458-AAC3-5A9B70B4CCAA@fileaffairs.de%3E

The solution that worked for me with pdfbox 2.0.1:

File myFile = new File("myFile.pdf");
PDDocument pdDoc = PDDocument.load(myFile);
PDDocumentCatalog pdCatalog = pdDoc.getDocumentCatalog();
PDAcroForm pdAcroForm = pdCatalog.getAcroForm();

// set the NeedAppearances flag to false
pdAcroForm.setNeedAppearances(false);


field.setValue("new-value");

pdAcroForm.flatten();
pdDoc.save("myFlattenedFile.pdf");
pdDoc.close();

I didn't need to do the 2 extra steps in the above solution link:

// correct the missing page link for the annotations
// Add the missing resources to the form

I created my pdf form in OpenOffice 4.1.1 and exported to pdf. The 2 items selected in the OpenOffice export dialogue were:

1. selected "create Pdf Form"
2. Submit format of "PDF" - I found this gave smaller pdf file size than selecting "FDF" but still operated as a pdf form.

Using PdfBox I populated the form fields and created a flattened pdf file that removed the form fields but retained the form field values.