Fill PDF Forms

Open a PDF and every page appears with its form fields turned into real boxes you can type into, right where they sit on the paper. The same fields are also listed in a panel beside the pages, with a counter that shows how many you have filled so far. When you are done, press Download filled PDF and you get a copy with your answers written into it.

Not every form has fields. Many PDFs are just printed pages with blank lines, or scans of paper forms. For those, you can click anywhere to type, add a tick or a cross, stamp today's date and place your signature. Either way, the whole job is done on a computer or a phone without installing anything.

A fillable form has fields built into the file: text boxes, check boxes, round radio buttons and lists. When you open one, each field gets a light blue box on top of the page, in exactly the place where the form designer put it. Click a box and type, just as you would in a form on a website.

Every field also appears in the Form fields list next to the pages, by its name or by the tooltip the designer gave it. The heading of that list shows a counter, such as 7/20, so you can see at a glance how much is left. On a long form it is often faster to work down the list than to scroll through the pages, and both stay in sync: an answer typed in one place shows in the other at once.

Rules set by the form are respected. A field with a maximum length stops accepting letters at that length, which matters for things like postcodes, dates and ID numbers split into boxes. Read-only fields are shown but cannot be changed, so text the sender filled in beforehand stays as it was.

Answers that are already in the form when you open it are read in too. If someone started the form before you, or you are correcting a copy you filled last week, every field shows its current value and you only change what is wrong. The zoom menu, from 80% to 200%, makes small boxes easier to hit, and the fields grow with the page so they always line up with the printed labels.

If a PDF has no fields, the summary line says so and the tool switches to Type anywhere for you. Click on a blank line and a small text box opens right there; type the answer and click the next spot. Set the text size, from 6 to 48, in the Size box that appears in the toolbar. An empty text box is simply left out when you save, so a stray click does nothing.

The toolbar has three quick marks as well. ✓ Tick puts a check mark where you click, for the little squares on paper forms. ✗ Cross does the same with a cross. Date writes today's date in the format your device uses. Each mark is a small text box, so you can still change it before saving.

This is also the right method for scanned forms. A scan is a photo of paper, so it has no fields for the tool to find. Zoom in to 150% or 200% from the zoom menu to place the text neatly on the lines. Use the same tools on a fillable form if you need to add a note in a spot that has no field.

Made a mistake? Click into the text box and change the words, or clear it completely and press Delete to remove the empty box. To start the marks over, choose Other PDF and open the form again; nothing is saved until you download, so no harm is done.

Choose Signature and a small panel opens. You can draw your signature with a mouse, a trackpad, a finger or a pen, type your name and have it set in a handwriting-style font, or upload a picture of your signature. When you are happy with it, click on the page where it belongs and it is placed there.

The same signature stays ready, so you can click again to place it on another page, for example next to initials boxes. If one lands in the wrong place, double-click it to remove it and click again in the right spot.

Signature fields in a form are skipped, because the tool does not create certified digital signatures. The signature you add is a picture on the page. That is accepted for most everyday forms, but some banking or legal documents ask for a signature backed by a certificate. For signing alone, Sign PDF is made for that job.

Before you download, decide whether the form should stay editable. With Flatten off, the answers are written into the real fields, so the form still works in any PDF reader. You, or the next person, can open it later and change or add answers. Leave it off when someone else still has to fill in their part.

With Flatten on, the answers are printed onto the pages and the fields are removed, so nobody can change them later. Turn it on for the final copy you send to an office, a school or a client. Your ticks, dates and signature are always drawn on the page, whether Flatten is on or off. If you already have a filled form and only need it locked, Flatten PDF does just that.

After the download, a short line under the toolbar confirms how many fields were filled. The file name is the name of your form with -filled added, so it does not overwrite the original.

Behind the scenes, the copy is written with pdf-lib, a library that runs in your browser. Your answers go into the form's fields first, then the text, ticks, dates and signatures you placed are drawn on top. The rest of the file, such as the page size, the printed text, the logos and the other pages, is kept as it was.

Form fields are saved in the standard PDF fonts, which cover English and the accented letters of Western European languages such as French, German, Spanish and Portuguese. Names like Zoë, José or Müller are no problem.

Answers in other alphabets, such as Greek, Cyrillic, Arabic, Hindi, Chinese or Japanese, may not be saved into a form field, because those fonts do not contain the letters. If that happens, the field is left as it was. Use Type anywhere for such answers instead: text the standard fonts cannot write is drawn as a sharp picture of the text, so it looks right on the page, although it cannot be searched afterwards.

The ✓ and ✗ marks are handled the same way, which is why they always look the same in every PDF reader and on paper.

Long forms are rarely finished in one go. Save answers downloads a small file ending in -answers.json with every value you have typed, ticked and picked so far. Next time, open the same form, press Load answers, choose that file, and the fields fill themselves again.

It also saves time with forms you fill every month or every year. Keep the answers file next to the blank form, load it, change the two or three details that are new, and download. Load answers only touches the fields named in the file, so anything else stays as it is. Clear form empties every field and unticks every box, which is handy when you want to start again.

The answers file is plain text, with each field name followed by your answer, so you can open it in any text editor to check what it holds. Keep it somewhere safe: it contains the same personal details as the form. Ticks, dates and signatures placed on the page are not part of it, only the values of the form's own fields.

Sometimes the same form has to be filled for many people: certificates for a class, letters for every member, labels for a list of customers. The Fill many copies from a CSV panel makes one filled PDF for each row of a table and gives you all of them in a single ZIP file.

This is how you fill pdf form from excel: open your sheet in your spreadsheet program and use Save as, or Download as, to save it as a CSV file. The first row must hold the column headings, and each heading should match a field name in the form. Capital letters do not matter, and a heading that matches the tooltip of a field works too. Commas, semicolons and tabs between the columns are all recognised.

To get the headings right the first time, press Download CSV template. You get a CSV with one column for every field, named exactly as the form names them. Open it in your spreadsheet, add one row per copy, save it as CSV again and open it with Open CSV.

A small example: a course certificate has the fields Name, Course and Date. Your sheet has those three headings in the first row, then one row per student. Open the CSV, choose Name under File names from, and press the button. The ZIP holds one certificate per student, each named after the student, such as Maria Lopez.pdf, ready to send.

Every feature on this page works without payment: typing into fields, all six filling tools, signatures, Flatten, saved answers and filling many copies from a CSV. Because the work is done by your own browser, there is no server time to pay for, no daily limit and no queue.

So when you need to fill pdf form online free, you do not get a cut-down version with a better one behind a paywall. Forms of up to 100 MB can be opened, and the number of forms you fill in a day is up to you.

Many sites let you fill a form for free and then ask for money, an account or a trial at the download step. Here the download button gives you the finished PDF straight away, with no stamp and no line of text added by us.

That is the plain answer if you want to fill pdf form free and keep the result looking like your own document. The filled copy carries only your answers, your marks and your signature.

There is no account to create, no e-mail address to give and no confirmation link to click. Open the page, add the form, fill it in and download it. Nothing has to be remembered afterwards, and there is nothing to cancel.

If you are looking to fill pdf online free no sign up, the whole process takes four steps: select the form, type the answers, tick Flatten if needed, and press Download filled PDF.

Forms are full of personal details: names, addresses, dates of birth, account numbers, health questions. That is why this tool reads the PDF, shows the pages and writes your answers inside your browser tab. The form, the answers and the filled copy are made on your device and are not uploaded or stored by us. The answers file and the CSV are read in your browser too.

There is one exception. When a PDF has a password, it has to be unlocked before it can be filled. For that step, the file and the password are sent once over an encrypted connection to our server, and the unlocked copy comes straight back to your browser. Filling and saving then happen on your device, as with any other file. The downloaded copy has no password; Unlock PDF does only the unlocking if that is all you need.

You do not need a desktop PDF program, a plug-in or an app. A modern browser is enough, which is useful on a work computer where you cannot install software, on a library PC or on a borrowed laptop.

The page also needs no extensions and makes no changes to your browser settings. It is an ordinary web page: once it has loaded, the form you open is read, shown and saved by the browser itself, and closing the tab clears the file from memory. Coming back tomorrow works the same way, with nothing to update first.

If you want to fill out pdf form without adobe software or any paid editor, this page covers the usual cases: fillable forms, flat forms, scans, ticks, dates and signatures. The one kind of form it cannot handle is the XFA form, explained in the limits below.

The tool works in every up-to-date browser: Chrome, Edge, Firefox, Safari, Opera and Samsung Internet. Browsers can show PDFs on their own, but their built-in viewers differ a lot in how they handle forms, and they offer nothing for flat PDFs, signatures or many copies at once.

To fill pdf form in chrome with this page, open the page, drag the PDF from your Downloads bar or folder onto the box, fill it in and press Download filled PDF. Chrome saves the copy to your Downloads folder, or asks where to save it if you have turned that setting on. The same steps work in the other browsers.

On a Windows PC, open the page in Edge, Chrome or Firefox and drag the form from File Explorer onto the box, or click Select PDF form. Use the Tab key to move from one field to the next in the list beside the pages, and the zoom menu to make small print bigger.

When you fill pdf form on windows this way, the filled copy goes to your Downloads folder. From there you can attach it to an e-mail, upload it to a portal or print it. Windows 10 and Windows 11 work the same, and so do Linux PCs and Chromebooks.

On a Mac, open the page in Safari, Chrome or Firefox and drag the PDF from Finder onto the box. The trackpad works well for drawing a signature, and the Tab key moves between fields in the list.

To fill pdf form on mac and keep the answers editable, leave Flatten off; to send a final copy, turn it on. The file lands in your Downloads folder, where Quick Look lets you check it before you send it.

On an iPhone or iPad, open the page in Safari or Chrome and tap Select PDF form. Choose the form from Files, iCloud Drive or another storage app. Tap a light blue box to type into it, or use the Form fields list below the pages, which is easier on a small screen.

To fill pdf form on iphone when the PDF came by e-mail, save the attachment to Files first, then pick it here. Sign with your finger in the signature panel. When you press Download filled PDF, Safari saves the copy to Downloads in the Files app, where you can share it by mail or a messaging app.

On an Android phone or tablet, open the page in Chrome or Samsung Internet and tap Select PDF form. The file picker shows Downloads, Drive and other apps, so a form from an e-mail or a website is easy to find.

To fill pdf on android, type into the boxes on the page or in the list, draw your signature with a finger and tap Download filled PDF. The copy is saved to Downloads. Turn the phone sideways for a wider page, or choose a higher zoom to tap small boxes accurately.

Most offices now accept a filled PDF by e-mail or through an upload portal. Check the size limit first: a form with a large scan inside can be several megabytes, and Compress PDF can make it smaller without changing your answers. If several documents must go in one upload, Merge PDF joins the filled form with the rest.

To print the filled form, open the downloaded copy in your usual PDF reader and print at 100% or Actual size, not Fit to page, so the boxes line up with any pre-printed paper. A flattened copy prints exactly as it looks on screen in every reader, which makes it the safer choice for paper.

If the office wants a wet signature, print the form with the answers filled in, sign it by hand and scan it back. A phone camera and Scan to PDF turn the signed paper into a clean PDF again.

XFA forms are not supported. Some government and tax forms are built with an older technology called XFA, made with LiveCycle Designer. Their fields are not stored the usual way, and the PDF libraries that run in a browser cannot fill them. Such a form may open with only a message asking you to wait or to use another reader, or with no fields at all. For those, use a desktop reader that supports XFA, or ask the office for a standard PDF version.

Signature fields are not signed with a certificate. The signature you place is a picture on the page, and signature fields in the form are left empty. Push buttons and scripts in a form, such as buttons that print or calculate a total, do not run, so totals have to be typed in by hand.

Scanned and flat forms have no fields, so the counter, the Form fields list, saved answers and the CSV panel are only available for fillable forms. Text you place with Type anywhere cannot be moved after it is placed; delete it with the Delete key when it is empty and click again. Very large forms with hundreds of pages work, but take longer to open on older phones.

With your form filled, Compress PDF makes it small enough for an upload portal, and Merge PDF joins it with supporting documents such as an ID scan or a payslip.

If you need to change the form's own text rather than fill it, use Edit PDF. To lock a form someone else filled, use Flatten PDF.