About Fill PDF form
Forms still arrive as PDFs: tax forms, rental applications, school permission slips, onboarding packs, insurance claims. The traditional way to complete one is to print it, fill it in by hand, and scan it back, which is slow and produces a worse copy than the one you started with.
This tool opens the form in the editor and lets you type straight into the boxes it already has. When you are done, you save the PDF with your answers in it. Opening a document in the editor sends a copy to our server so that its text and fields can be read, and that copy is deleted within 24 hours.
How to fill in a PDF form
- Choose the form, or drop it onto the page. It opens in the editor.
- Click a box and type. Fields the form already defines, such as text boxes and checkboxes, can be filled in directly.
- Work through the form from top to bottom. If a line has no box, because the form was designed as a flat page, use the Text tool to put your answer on the line.
- Add a signature where one is asked for, using Sign PDF, which is part of Plus.
- Press Export to save the finished form. Keep the filled copy and the blank original separately.
When you would use it
- Completing an application or a registration form without printing it.
- Filling the same form again for a second person by starting from the blank original.
- Returning a form to an office that only accepts PDF.
- Typing answers into a flat form that has no fields, by placing text on the lines.
- Preparing a form for your team to complete: the editor can also draw new fields on a page that has none.
What it will not do
- Some forms are flat pictures of forms. They have no fields to type into, and you place text on the page instead. A scanned form may also need OCR PDF to be readable at all.
- The tool does not validate your answers or send them anywhere. It writes what you type into the file, and you send the file.
- Forms that depend on scripts, such as one that calculates a total as you type, may not behave exactly as they do in the program that built them.
- A form protected with a password has to be unlocked first with Unlock PDF.
- It does not make a legally binding signature by itself. That depends on your jurisdiction and on who is asking.
How it compares
A browser’s built-in PDF viewer can fill simple forms, and for a form with ordinary fields that is often enough. A dedicated editor is useful when the form is a flat page, when you need to place text freely, or when you want to sign it and move pages around as well.
Printing and handwriting always works and always loses quality in the scan. Typing is legible, takes less time and survives being copied.
Tips
- Save the blank form untouched. You will want it again.
- Check dates and numbers before you export. The tool types what you give it.