How to fill in a PDF form

Updated

Some PDF forms have fields you can type into; others are just pictures of a form. Both can be filled on screen without printing anything.

Fill in a form →

Forms with fields

  1. Open Fill & sign a form and choose the PDF.
  2. Click into each field and type; tick checkboxes and choose from dropdowns.
  3. Sign if needed, then download. Flatten PDF locks the answers in so they cannot be changed.

Flat forms without fields

Open the PDF in the editor and add text boxes on the lines. Smart guides help line the answers up. You can also draw real fields — text boxes, checkboxes and dropdowns — onto a flat PDF to make it genuinely fillable for others.

Tools for this job

Fill & sign a form · Sign PDF · Edit PDF · Flatten PDF

More guides

More free PDF tools

PDF to PowerPoint

Turn PDF pages into slides with whole-paragraph text boxes, real lists and native tables.

PDF to Word

Turn a PDF into a Word document that edits like one written in Word.

PDF to Excel

Turn the tables in a PDF into a clean Excel workbook with real numbers and dates.

PowerPoint to Word

Export slide text, tables, pictures and notes to an editable Word document.

Edit PDF

Edit PDFs like a Word document: text, tables, images, links and comments.

PDF Viewer

Open, read, search and print PDF files right in your browser.

Sign PDF

Draw, type or upload your signature and place it anywhere.

Alternate & mix

Interleave the pages of two PDFs, such as front and back scans.

Split PDF

Break a PDF into separate files, by page or by range.

Rotate pages

Turn pages a quarter, half or three-quarter turn.

Flatten PDF

Bake form fields and annotations into the page.

Fix PDF layout

One click to turn pages upright, straighten scans, drop blank pages and even out sizes and margins.

Redesign PDF

Give any PDF a clean, professional design in one click.

Change page size

Resize pages to A4, Letter or Legal, scaling the content to fit.

Text to PDF

Turn .txt notes and Markdown files into a clean, paginated PDF.

OCR PDF

Turn scanned PDFs into searchable — or fully editable — documents.

Redact PDF

Black out sensitive passages — and remove them for good.

Compress PDF

Make the file smaller, with the trade-off you choose.

Repair PDF

Fix a damaged or corrupt PDF that will not open properly.