Replacement for OmniForm 4

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GeekDrew

Diamond Member
Jun 7, 2000
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I work in the IT department of a local government, and one of our departments uses OmniForm Filler 4.x for hundreds of forms. The forms themselves look and work just like your average fill-able PDF form does -- the user fills in the form controls (check boxes, text boxes, etc), and then saves the form (and prints it, if appropriate).

I recently read that OmniForm has been discontinued, and that OmniPage is its indirect replacement. I admit that I haven't thoroughly studies the benefits of OmniPage, but its pricetag makes me want to look elsewhere before even checking into it. We are under a pretty tight budget crunch, and nobody thought to budget for this particular piece of software, so the less expensive it is, the better. I need around 50 seats in replacement of OmniForm Filler -- meaning the end users just completing and saving/printing the form.

Does anyone have any suggestions for a replacement for the current OmniForm solution? Converting the forms to PDF sounds like a potential possibility, but I *think* I would then need to buy a copy of OmniForm 5 in order to convert the OmniForm files to PDF files, and would also have to buy a copy of some PDF form filling program for each of the ~50 clients.

Help? Thanks!
 

GeekDrew

Diamond Member
Jun 7, 2000
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Originally posted by: MrChad
IBM FileNet Forms Manager would suit your requirements, but it may be overkill for what you need.

Oh yeah, *WAY* overkill. I need something that is absolutely not in a client/server relationship. Doesn't need to connect to any databases/servers/etc... actually, can't, because the forms have to be distributed to many disconnected clients.

Perhaps a usage scenario would help pinpoint my needs:

I have a sample form -- we'll call it "purchase order request". It's a form that was designed long ago, and has a design that can't change. It's been scanned and imported into OmniForm (or otherwise recreated in OmniForm such that it looks identical). A user opens a shared templates folder (read-only), and types into the fields on the form. The user then saves a copy of the form to his or her "My Documents" folder, just as any other document. No databases/etc are contacted at any point. The data is simply saved in the same file as the form template, in OmniForm. The electronic copy is saved just in case there are typo's or whatever, and it needs to be later modified... the data that's entered electronically cannot legally be used in *any* manner... the only data we can use is what is printed (hardcopy), and manually entered from that form onto another computer network, which is completely disconnected from the network that has the forms on it.

As far as completing the form and printing it, migrating the forms to a PDF file, and then using Acrobat Reader to fill the form in and print it would be sufficient. The only problem with that is that they need the ability to save the forms to their documents folder, for later reference. Acrobat (Standard version) is probably the most popular software package that makes saving completed form data into a PDF file possible, but it's also rather expensive. There are alternate solutions out there, most of which cost less than Acrobat (and definitely less than "forms management" solutions), but I haven't seen any good user reviews of the programs anywhere, or they haven't been around long enough, for me to feel comfortable deploying them.

So... perhaps I've rambled on for far too long and have made this even more confusing. I need some sleep. ;)
 

errorhelp

Junior Member
Jun 16, 2014
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I work in the IT department of a local government, and one of our departments uses OmniForm Filler 4.x for hundreds of forms. The forms themselves look and work just like your average fill-able PDF form does -- the user fills in the form controls (check boxes, text boxes, etc), and then saves the form (and prints it, if appropriate).

I recently read that OmniForm has been discontinued, and that OmniPage is its indirect replacement. I admit that I haven't thoroughly studies the benefits of OmniPage, but its pricetag makes me want to look elsewhere before even checking into it. We are under a pretty tight budget crunch, and nobody thought to budget for this particular piece of software, so the less expensive it is, the better. I need around 50 seats in replacement of OmniForm Filler -- meaning the end users just completing and saving/printing the form.

Does anyone have any suggestions for a replacement for the current OmniForm solution? Converting the forms to PDF sounds like a potential possibility, but I *think* I would then need to buy a copy of OmniForm 5 in order to convert the OmniForm files to PDF files, and would also have to buy a copy of some PDF form filling program for each of the ~50 clients.

Help? Thanks!

I am aware that this post is 6 years old. I just wanted to share my fix for Omniform Filler 4.0 on Windows 7 64-bit in case someone needs it:

I was able to get Omniform 4.0 working flawlessly on Windows 7 64-bit by writing the following script. It changes some folder and registry permissions, then reregisters an internet explorer DLL that gets messed up during the omniform install. You need to create the batch file, then have a copy on SetACL.exe (a registry permissions tool from here: http://helgeklein.com/setacl/ ) in the same folder and run the batch file as admin. The contents are:

@ECHO OFF
REM ** This batch adds full permissions for the Users group to the needed
REM ** reg keys and folders to make 0mniForm Filler 4.0 run properly on
REM ** Win 7 64-bit under a non-admin user account.
REM **
REM ** SetACL.exe must be in same folder as .bat for this to run.
REM ** "%~dp0..." is used to allow execution from UNC paths with spaces.
REM ** Omniform filler install corrupts IE so that new tabs open blank.
REM ** ieproxy.dll is reregistered to fix this.
REM
REM ** Author: Michael Belsky

@ECHO ON
"%~dp0SetACL.exe" -on "C:\Program Files (x86)\Caere\OmniForm Filler" -ot file -actn ace -ace "n:users;p:write"

"%~dp0SetACL.exe" -on "hkcr\Wow6432Node\CLSID\{4F4D4E49-464F-524D-AFDC-0020AF286206}" -ot reg -actn ace -ace "n:users;p:full"
"%~dp0SetACL.exe" -on "hkcr\OmniForm.Form" -ot reg -actn ace -ace "n:users;p:full"
"%~dp0SetACL.exe" -on "hkcr\Wow6432Node\CLSID\{77DA13C0-8D4A-11CE-AFDC-0020AF286206}" -ot reg -actn ace -ace "n:users;p:full"
"%~dp0SetACL.exe" -on "hkcr\OmniForm.Application" -ot reg -actn ace -ace "n:users;p:full"
"%~dp0SetACL.exe" -on "hkcr\OmniForm.Data" -ot reg -actn ace -ace "n:users;p:full"
"%~dp0SetACL.exe" -on "hkcr\.ofd" -ot reg -actn ace -ace "n:users;p:full"
"%~dp0SetACL.exe" -on "hkcr\.ofm" -ot reg -actn ace -ace "n:users;p:full"
"%~dp0SetACL.exe" -on "hklm\SOFTWARE\Wow6432Node\Caere Corp" -ot reg -actn ace -ace "n:users;p:full"

regsvr32 "C:\Program Files (x86)\Internet Explorer\ieproxy.dll"

pause

---

Hi,

Welcome to AnandTech Forums. I locked the thread because the previous reply was over ten years ago.

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