You have a form as a PDF, maybe exported from Word, maybe from a template site, and people keep printing it, filling it in with a pen and sending back a blurry phone photo. The fix is to add real form fields, so the PDF itself knows where people are allowed to type.
That's what Create forms does. You place fields on top of the existing pages, set a few properties, and download a PDF that works in Adobe Acrobat Reader, Preview on a Mac, Chrome's built-in viewer and most other PDF apps.
What a fillable field actually is
A printed line with "Name: ________" under it is just ink. A form field is a separate object in the PDF with a name, a position on the page, a type (text, checkbox and so on) and a value. PDF readers draw fields as boxes you can click into, and they save whatever you type as that field's value.
The field's name matters more than it looks. Two fields with the same name share one value, so typing in one fills the other. That's handy when "Applicant name" needs to appear on page 1 and page 4. It's confusing when you didn't mean it. The editor warns you when a name is already in use.
The field types
The toolbar in Create forms has one button per field type:
- "Text": a one-line box.
- "Multiline": a bigger box for several lines, like an address or comments.
- "Checkbox": a box people can tick.
- "Radio": one choice out of a group. Radio buttons that share the same "Radio group" name are one question, so picking one clears the others.
- "Dropdown": a list of options. Type the options one per line in the field's properties. Tick "Allow multiple selections" and it's saved as a list box instead, where people can pick several.
- "Signature": a proper signature field that PDF apps offer to sign.
Next to those are "Label", for typing plain text onto the page (a question, or instructions), and "Whiteout", for covering something with a white box, such as a printed line you're putting a field over.
Building the form, step by step
- Open Create forms and click "Upload PDF file", or choose "or start with a blank document" if you're building a form from scratch.
- Pick a field type in the toolbar and click on the page where it goes. Drag to move it and drag its corners to resize it.
- Click the field, then the gear button, to open "Field properties". Give it a sensible "Field name" (not "Text7").
- Set what applies: "Default value", "Field is mandatory", "Read-only", "Max length", or "Repeat on all pages" for something like a reference number that should appear on every page.
- Click "Tab order" and click the fields in the order people should move through them with the Tab key, then "Done".
- Click "Download".
"Divide into boxes" on a text field spreads the characters over equal boxes, one each, which suits account numbers, postcodes and dates printed as little squares. The number of boxes is also the maximum length.
A word on "Max length" and "Field is mandatory": they're stored in the PDF, but enforcing them is up to the app that opens it. Acrobat respects them. Some lighter viewers don't, so don't rely on them as validation.
What Detect does, and what it misses
Placing thirty fields by hand is tedious. "Detect" looks at the page and turns likely blanks into fields for you. It finds three things:
- runs of underscores in the text (the "Name: ________" kind), which become text fields;
- box characters like ☐, which become checkboxes;
- empty outlined rectangles drawn on the page: wide ones become text fields, small squares become checkboxes.
It skips spots that already have a field and boxes with text inside them. When it's done it tells you how many it added and asks you to check them, and you should. It only ever makes text fields and checkboxes, so radio buttons and drop-downs are yours to add. It also can't see anything on a scanned page, because a scan is a picture with no text or drawn shapes for it to read, and a line drawn as a single stroke (rather than typed underscores or a closed box) isn't picked up either. In those cases you place the fields by hand; it's slower but works fine.
If the PDF already has fields that someone else made, "Edit form" switches on Form Edit mode, where those fields can be moved, resized, renamed or deleted like your own. Old XFA forms (made with Adobe LiveCycle) can't be edited here; the editor says so when it finds one.
Downloading versus publishing online
"Download" gives you a normal fillable PDF. You email it out, people fill it in with whatever PDF app they have, and they send it back. Nothing is uploaded at any point; the form is built in your browser. If you're on the receiving end of forms like this, the guide to filling in a PDF form covers that side.
"Publish" is different, and it does upload. It sends the PDF to our server and gives you a public link. Anyone with the link can open the form in a browser, fill it in, sign it and press Submit, and each completed PDF is emailed to you. You also get a private responses link where you can see every response and stop accepting new ones. There's an option to "Collect a signature" and one to "Flatten completed PDFs", which makes submitted answers part of the page so they can't be edited afterwards.
A few limits apply to publishing. The PDF can be up to 4 MB, it can't be password protected, and only standard (AcroForm) fields can be filled online. If the form is going to a handful of colleagues, downloading and emailing is simpler. If it's going to fifty people you don't know, publishing saves you collecting attachments from fifty inboxes. For contracts where several named people each need to sign in turn, requesting signatures is the better fit.
Test it like a stranger would
Before you send it, open the downloaded PDF in a different app from the one you'll use yourself (Preview, Acrobat Reader, or the PDF viewer on your phone). Press Tab from the first field and make sure it goes where you'd expect. Type a long name into the shortest box, since text that doesn't fit is the most common complaint. And tick every radio button in each group once, because a radio button with the wrong group name quietly becomes its own separate question.
Also useful: Fill & sign · Flatten PDF
