Filling in a flat PDF form with Fill and sign in PDF by Zaweba

Plenty of forms arrive as PDFs that were never made to be filled in on screen. They look like forms, with boxes and lines, but clicking on them does nothing. The usual answer is to print, fill in by hand, sign and scan. Form > Fill and sign in PDF by Zaweba saves that round trip. It works on any PDF, including flat forms with no fields at all.

The tools

Add text is the main one. Click where you want the text to go and type. Use it for names, addresses, reference numbers and answers in boxes.

Today's date drops in the current date, so you don't have to type it out or check the calendar.

Tick, Cross, Dot and Line are marks. A tick or cross goes in a check box, a dot can mark a choice in a circle, and a line can strike through an option or underline something. These mark tools stay in hand, so once you have picked Tick you can click box after box down a page without going back to the menu each time.

Signatures and initials are part of Fill and sign too, and have their own article.

Filling a form well

Work down the form in order, as you would on paper. It is easy to miss a box when jumping about.

Zoom in on small boxes before you add a mark. A tick that lands half outside its box looks careless, and on a busy form it can be unclear which option you meant. The zoom tool makes this quick.

For forms with lots of lines, the rulers, grid and guides help keep your typing level with the printed lines. A guide along a row of answer lines lets every entry sit neatly on it.

Read the form once through on screen before you save. It is far easier to move or change an item now than after it has been flattened.

Separate items, then flattened

While you work, each piece of text and each mark is a separate annotation sitting on top of the page. That means you can move it, change it or delete it if you get something wrong.

When you save, the items are flattened by default. Flattening makes them part of the page itself, so the form looks the same to everyone, and nobody can drag your answers about or delete them. Flattened text is real text, so the person receiving the form can still search it and copy from it, unlike a scan of a handwritten form.

Flattening on save is a setting. If you would rather keep the items as separate annotations, for example while a form is still being worked on, you can change it. For a finished form being sent back, flattening is usually what you want.

When a form has real fields

Some PDFs do have proper form fields, the kind you click into and type. PDF by Zaweba handles those too, and you can move between them with Tab. Fill and sign is for everything else: the scanned forms, the ones exported without fields, and any document where you just need to add a few words and a tick.

Why it is worth using

Filling a form on screen is quicker than printing, writing, signing and scanning, and the result is cleaner and easier to read. It also works offline, so personal details on the form stay on your PC. For the many flat forms that still circulate, Fill and sign in PDF by Zaweba turns a chore into a few minutes' work.