How to: Delete Interactive Form Fields from a PDF Document

• Apr 23, 2019
• 3 minutes to read

Important

You require a license to the DevExpress Office File API or DevExpress Universal Subscription to use these examples in production code. Refer to the DevExpress Subscription page for pricing information.

This example shows how to remove a particular form field and a whole interactive form from a PDF document.

To remove all form fields from a document, call the PdfDocumentProcessor.RemoveForm method.

If the interactive form is removed successfully, this method returns true. If the document doesn’t contain an interactive form that should be removed, this method returns false.

To remove a particular form field by its name, call the PdfDocumentProcessor.RemoveFormField method and pass a field name as an argument to this method.

The PdfDocumentProcessor.RemoveFormField method tries to find the field in a document using the field name. If this field is found in the document, then it will be removed from a document and this method returns true; otherwise, it returns false.

Note

A complete sample project is available at https://github.com/DevExpress-Examples/how-to-delete-interactive-form-fields-from-a-pdf-document-t494240

Program.vb

Imports DevExpress.Pdf
Imports System

Namespace RemoveInteractiveForm
    Friend Class Program
        Shared Sub Main(ByVal args() As String)
            Using processor As New PdfDocumentProcessor()

                ' Load a document with an interactive form.
                processor.LoadDocument("..\..\InteractiveForm.pdf")

                ' Remove a form field by its name.
                If processor.RemoveFormField("FirstName") Then

                    ' Save the modified document.
                    processor.SaveDocument("..\..\Result1.pdf")

                Else

                    ' Show a message if the form field was not found in a document.
                    Console.WriteLine("The form field was not removed from a document. Make sure, the form field exists in the document.")
                End If

                ' Remove the whole interactive form.
                If processor.RemoveForm() Then

                    ' Save the modified document.
                    processor.SaveDocument("..\..\Result2.pdf")

                Else

                    ' Show a message if the interactive form was not found in a document.
                    Console.WriteLine("The interactive form was not removed from a document. Make sure the interactive form exists in the document.")
                End If
            End Using
        End Sub
    End Class
End Namespace

Program.cs

using DevExpress.Pdf;
using System;

namespace RemoveInteractiveForm {
    class Program {
        static void Main(string[] args) {
            using (PdfDocumentProcessor processor = new PdfDocumentProcessor()) {

                // Load a document with an interactive form.
                processor.LoadDocument("..\\..\\InteractiveForm.pdf");

                // Remove a form field by its name.
                if (processor.RemoveFormField("FirstName"))

                    // Save the modified document.
                    processor.SaveDocument("..\\..\\Result1.pdf");

                else

                    // Show a message if the form field was not found in a document.
                    Console.WriteLine("The form field was not removed from a document. Make sure, the form field exists in the document.");

                // Remove the whole interactive form.
                if (processor.RemoveForm())

                    // Save the modified document.
                    processor.SaveDocument("..\\..\\Result2.pdf");

                else

                    // Show a message if the interactive form was not found in a document.
                    Console.WriteLine("The interactive form was not removed from a document. Make sure the interactive form exists in the document.");
            }
        }
    }
}