How to make a blank PDF

Press Ctrl+N, or choose File > New > Blank PDF, and PDF by Zaweba makes a new empty PDF. You pick the paper size from A4, A5, A3, Letter, Legal or Tabloid, set it either way round, and ask for as many pages as you need. It opens in a tab straight away, not yet saved, ready for you to add to.

A blank PDF sounds like an odd thing to want, but it's a useful starting point. People make them to write notes on, to build a simple form, to collect pages from several other files, or to have something to sign and send back.

Choosing size, orientation and pages

The sizes cover the common office papers. A4 is the everyday size in Britain and most of the world. A5 is half of it, good for booklets and notes. A3 is twice A4, for posters and drawings. Letter, Legal and Tabloid are the North American sizes, worth choosing if the file is going to someone who'll print it there.

Portrait suits letters and forms, landscape suits slides, tables and plans. And the page count can be anything from one up, so a ten-page notebook or a thirty-page divider set is as easy as a single sheet.

Putting things on the pages

An empty page in PDF by Zaweba isn't a dead end. There are plenty of ways to fill it.

Form > Fill and sign adds text, today's date, ticks, crosses, dots and lines anywhere on a page, and can add a signature or initials. The comment tools add text boxes, sticky notes, shapes, arrows, freehand drawing, stamps and pictures. Form > Prepare form adds real form fields, such as text fields, check boxes, drop-downs and signature fields, so a blank PDF can become a form for other people to fill in.

You can also bring in pages from elsewhere. Drop a PDF between two thumbnails to insert its pages, or insert pages from a copied picture or text on the clipboard.

Saving it

Because the new document isn't saved yet, nothing is written to disk until you choose to. Save it when there's something on it worth keeping, and give it a name that says what it's for. If you close the tab without saving, it's gone, which is handy when you were just trying something out.

Ready-made starting points

If the blank PDF is only a step towards something else, there may be a quicker route. File > New can make a PDF straight from pictures, from a text or Markdown file, from a web page or HTML file, from the clipboard or from a screen capture. Making a PDF of photos is one step with From pictures, rather than making a blank file and adding the photos one by one.

And if you need an extra empty page in a document you already have, there's no need for a new file. Pages > Insert a blank page puts one exactly where you want it.

A tip for forms

Blank PDFs make good bases for simple forms. Make the page, add headings and labels with text boxes, then use Form > Prepare form to add fields where answers go. Required fields, formats such as dates and currency, and simple calculations can all be set in the field properties, so the form checks itself as people fill it in.

PDF by Zaweba is free software for Windows that works offline with no account, so the documents you start from scratch stay on your own computer.