Create Fillable PDF Form

About the Create Fillable PDF Form

Turn any PDF — an application form, a registration sheet, a checklist, a scanned paper form — into a form people can fill in on screen. Draw text, multi-line, number and date fields, checkboxes, radio groups, dropdowns and signature fields where they belong, or press Find blank lines and boxes and accept the fields it suggests for the page’s blank lines, underscores, empty boxes, table cells and rows of character boxes.

Every field gets a name, a tooltip that screen readers announce, and the options that matter: required, maximum length, one character per printed box, font size, alignment and a default value. Number and date fields carry the standard format scripts, so readers that run them check what is typed. Try the form in Test fill before you save. The result is a standard AcroForm (ISO 32000-1 §12.7) that opens in Adobe Acrobat Reader, browser viewers and mobile PDF apps — made in your browser, without uploading the file.

Common uses

• Making the forms of a school, clinic, society or small office fillable instead of printed.
• Turning a Word or scanned application form into one people can complete and email back.
• Adding a signature field and a few checkboxes to a contract or consent form.
• Preparing a form for colleagues, then filling it in with Fill PDF Form.

Field types

• Text — one line; optional maximum length and comb (the characters spread over that many printed boxes).
• Multi-line — wraps and scrolls, for addresses and comments.
• Number — accepts digits with your choice of decimal places and separator style (1,234.56 · 1.234,56 · 1234.56 …).
• Date — checks the format you choose, such as dd/mm/yyyy or yyyy-mm-dd.
• Checkbox, radio group (one choice from several options) and dropdown (with or without the person’s own value).
• Signature — an empty signature field for signing with a digital ID in a PDF reader (this tool doesn’t sign).

Suggested fields

The suggestions come from what is printed on the page: blank lines with a label beside them (“Name ______”), underscores and dotted leaders in the text, empty boxes and table cells, small squares (checkboxes), rows of touching squares (one field with one character per box) and box characters such as ☐. Lines that are underlines, table borders, contents-page dots and tables already full of data are left out. Each suggestion is named after its label and stays a suggestion until you accept it. Scanned pages have no text to read labels from — run OCR PDF first, then look for fields again.

Number and date fields

Number and date fields carry the format scripts that AcroForm readers use for such fields (AFNumber_Keystroke/AFNumber_Format and AFDate_KeystrokeEx/AFDate_FormatEx): Adobe Acrobat and Reader and other readers that run form scripts refuse letters in a number field, show the number with the chosen separators and check the date format. Readers without form scripts treat them as ordinary text fields. Test fill checks values the same way.

Accessibility

The tooltip (TU) is what a screen reader announces for a field, so give every field one that matches its printed label — suggestions get the label automatically. Fields are saved in reading order, row by row, so the Tab key moves through them as you’d expect. If the PDF is tagged, each new field is also added to the tags as a Form element and the tab order follows the tags, as PDF/UA asks; check the result with the PDF Accessibility Checker.

Standards

Fields are written as defined in ISO 32000-1:2008 §12.7 (Interactive forms): text, button (checkbox and radio) and choice fields with widget annotations and appearance streams, default values (/DV) for resetting the form, the Required, Comb and Multiline flags, and the form’s default resources (/DR) so readers can draw what is typed in Helvetica. Signature fields are empty /Sig fields.

Limitations

• Default values and dropdown choices can use only the characters of the standard form font (Latin letters, digits and common symbols, as in Windows-1252); people can still type any text into the fields in their reader.
• Password-protected PDFs need unlocking first with Unlock PDF.
• Adding fields changes the file, so existing digital signatures stop being valid.
• Dynamic XFA forms (from Adobe LiveCycle / AEM Forms) can’t take standard fields. The XFA data of static XFA forms is removed so readers show the new fields.
• Suggestions are guesses from the drawing on the page: check each one before accepting it. Scanned pages need OCR first.
• Calculated fields, buttons and form actions such as “submit by email” aren’t created.

Privacy

Everything happens in your browser. What you enter or open here is not uploaded or stored by MySmartCoPilot.