Fill PDF Form

How to fill out a PDF form

1. Open the fillable PDF. Its fields are read and listed page by page, with a preview of page 1.
2. Type your answers, tick the boxes and pick options from the lists.
3. Choose whether to flatten the answers, then press Save filled PDF.

Why fill a form as a list

Filling a PDF form directly on the page can be fiddly, especially on a phone: the boxes are tiny, you have to zoom and scroll, and it's easy to miss a field on page four. This tool reads the form's fields and shows them as an ordinary web form, grouped by page and in reading order from top to bottom. Each field is labeled with the hint text the form's author wrote or, if there isn't one, a tidied-up version of the field's internal name, so first_name becomes First name. Hover over a field on a computer to see its original name.

Supported field types

• Text boxes, including multi-line boxes for addresses or comments. If the form limits the number of characters, the same limit applies here.
• Checkboxes for yes/no questions and agreements.
• Radio buttons, where only one choice can be picked. A Clear link resets the group.
• Dropdowns, including ones that also accept your own typed answer.
• Option lists, some of which allow several selections.

Fields the author locked are shown but can't be changed. Signature boxes aren't listed; after saving, sign the form with Sign PDF. Values already in the form are loaded first, so you can also open a half-finished form and complete it.

Keep the form editable or flatten it

By default the saved PDF is still a working form: you or someone else can open it later and change an answer. Switch on Flatten after filling when you're sending a final version, for example a signed application or a submitted claim. Flattening turns each answer into ordinary page content and removes the fields, so the values can no longer be edited by accident, and they print the same in every reader. If you need to flatten an existing form without changing anything, Flatten PDF does just that.

When a PDF can't be filled here

Some PDFs only look like forms. If the file was printed to PDF or scanned, the blanks are just lines on a picture and there are no fields to list. In that case you'll see a message with a button to Edit PDF, where you can tap on each blank and type.

A few government and corporate forms use XFA, an older Adobe form technology that only Adobe Acrobat and Adobe Reader fully support. A pure XFA form has no standard fields for a browser to read, so this tool will tell you it can't be filled here. Some files contain both kinds. For those, your answers go into the standard fields and the XFA copy is dropped, so every reader shows the same values.

One more limit: answers are drawn with the standard PDF font, which covers English and most Western European letters. If you type characters outside that set, such as Cyrillic or Chinese, the value is still saved and most PDF readers will display it, but the form won't be flattened.

Your answers stay on your device

Forms ask for personal details: addresses, dates of birth, tax numbers, health information. Here, the PDF is opened and written by code running in your browser, and nothing you type is sent anywhere. There's no account and no copy kept after you close the tab.