How to fill in a PDF form, even one without fields

Three kinds of PDF form

A quick test: open the form and click a blank. If you can type, it's fillable. If nothing happens, it's flat or scanned.

• Fillable forms (sometimes called interactive forms) have fields built in: click a blank and a cursor appears, click a box and it ticks.
• Flat forms are ordinary pages with lines and boxes printed on them, often made by printing a document to PDF. Clicking a blank does nothing, so you need a tool that lets you place text on the page.
• Scanned forms are pictures of paper pages. They work like flat forms, and a computer can't read their words until text recognition (OCR) has run.

How to fill in a PDF form in PDFZyro

1. 1Open Fill forms on the Home page and choose the PDF from your documents, or upload it. If the document is already open, click Fill & Sign.
2. 2If the form has fields, click into the first one and type. Press Tab to move to the next field, tick the checkboxes and pick options from the lists.
3. 3If the form is flat, look for the dashed boxes. PDFZyro finds blank lines, empty boxes and table cells, small check boxes, and labels such as Name: or Date with room after them. Click one and type.
4. 4To write anywhere else, choose the Text tool (or press T) and click where the answer goes. You can change the text size and choose black, blue or red.
5. 5For boxes on a flat form, use Check mark, Cross or Dot, and use Line to strike out an option. The Date tool adds the date in the format you choose.
6. 6If the form needs a signature, choose Signature and click where you sign. The first time, type, draw or upload your signature; it's saved to your account for next time.
7. 7Click Save to keep the filled form as a new version, then download it. Or click Finish to sign, seal and download the form in one go.

Filling in a scanned form

On a scan there are no real lines or words for a computer to find, so PDFZyro can't suggest places to type. Choose the Text tool and click where each answer goes; with Select, you can move anything you placed to line it up with the blank.

If you fill in the same scanned form often, make it searchable with OCR first. PDFZyro can then read labels such as Name: and Date on the page and suggest places to type next to them. Lines and boxes that are only part of the scanned picture still aren't found, so check every page.

Other free ways to fill in a PDF form

• Adobe Acrobat Reader: the free Reader fills in fillable fields, and its Fill & Sign tool adds text and check marks to flat forms.
• Preview on a Mac: type into fillable fields directly. For flat forms, use the Text tool in the Markup toolbar.
• Your web browser: the built-in PDF viewers in Chrome, Edge and Firefox can fill in fillable fields. Download or save the PDF afterwards so your answers are kept. Flat forms usually need a PDF tool.
• Print, write and scan: it always works, but it's slow, handwriting can be hard to read, and the scan can't be searched.

Before you send the form

• Check every page, especially the last one, which often holds the signature and date.
• Look for required fields. When you click Finish in PDFZyro, any required fields that are still empty are listed, and you can jump straight to each one.
• Decide whether the answers should stay editable. If not, tick Flatten the form when you finish: the fields become part of the page and can't be changed by whoever receives the file.
• Keep the blank form. Saving in PDFZyro creates a new version, so the empty original is still in the version history for next time.
• Give the file a clear name, such as Surname - Application form, so the person receiving it can find it.

Making your own fillable form

If you send forms to other people, turn your PDF into a fillable form so they don't have to struggle with a flat one. Open the document with Prepare form, click Detect fields to let PDFZyro suggest fields, or add text boxes, checkboxes, dropdowns, dates, signature fields and totals yourself.

Click Test the form to try it before you share it. The fields work in any PDF reader, and you can export the answers from filled forms to a spreadsheet (CSV) or JSON.