Fill in a PDF form

Fillable or flat: how to tell

A fillable form has real fields built into the PDF by whoever designed it, and Octoolo lists them under The form on the right. A flat form only looks like one: a scan, or a PDF printed from a document, with lines and boxes drawn on the page and nothing to type into.

Some forms are both: a few real fields, with other spaces left flat. Use the panel for the fields and the Text tool for everything else. Forms downloaded from an official website are often fillable; forms that were scanned or sent as a photo never are.

Filling in the fields

Each field is listed under the name the form's maker gave it. Well-made forms use names like “Last name” or “Date of birth”; others say “Text1”, so keep the page in view to match them up. Text fields take typing, checkboxes tick, and dropdowns, lists and option buttons offer their choices in a menu.

The answers are written into the fields when you save, and the fields stay fillable. Whoever receives the form sees your answers in any PDF reader and could correct one if needed; Octoolo does not flatten forms into fixed text.

One rule matters. Answers are kept only while the pages stay as they came: turning a page is fine, but adding, deleting or reordering pages makes the saved file a new PDF without the fields, and the panel shows a note when that is the case. If the form must go out with attachments, save the filled form as its own file and send the rest alongside.

Typing on a flat form

• Line up with the lines. Click just above a line and type, then drag the text to sit it exactly. Drag its corner to make the letters bigger or smaller.
• Tick boxes. Type a capital X and drag it into the box.
• Match the form. Typewriter looks like a form filled in by machine, and Clean is the easiest to read. The size slider runs from about 7 to 67 points; 10 to 12 suits most forms.
• Several lines. Press Enter inside a text for an address or a comments box.
• Mistakes. Click the text and press Remove in the panel on the right, or use Ctrl Z.

Answers in the Latin alphabet are saved as real text. Names in other alphabets are saved as a picture of the words, which looks the same on screen and on paper. Everything you type stays movable until you save, so fill in the whole form first and tidy the alignment at the end.

Before you send it back

Read the form once more at a comfortable size: Larger and Smaller in the toolbar zoom from 20% to 400%, and Fit shows the full width. Add the date beside your signature, and check whether every page wants initials.

If you wrote an answer by hand on a scanned form and want it typed instead, cover it with White-out and type over it. Pages you have typed on carry a small dot in the page bar, which makes a skipped page easy to spot.

Octoolo keeps your work as you go, so a long form can be finished later even if the window closes. When it is done, save it under a clear name, such as the form's title and your surname.