Check for required fields before locking subforms and submitting

Hello,

I have a 5-page form with many questions, to be completed by the original requestor and multiple approvers.  What I'm trying to do is have the original requestor's Submit button on p. 3 lock the input on the first three pages, but first check if all those fields have some content.  I currently have all the fields on pp. 1-3 set to "Required" in the object properties, but my script still locks them when there's is one empty one.  Here's what I have:

//Lock portions of form
Page1.access = "readOnly"
Page2.access = "readOnly"
Page3.access = "readOnly"

//Save document, allow user to change name
app.execMenuItem("SaveAs");

//Submit via e-mail
Submit_REAL.event__click.submit.target = "mailto:someone@some.com" +
"?subject=Subject text" +
"&body=Message";
 Submit_REAL.execEvent("click");

The automatic check for required fields happens after the pages get locked.  I would like the check to stop the process before it locks the pages.  Is there any way to check all at once that all "Required" fields on those pages have some content before allowing the script to proceed?  I know how to script it to manually check the 50 or so questions on those pages, but I would like to avoid that.  Thanks for any help.