Someone sends you a PDF form and asks for it back "completed and signed". The old routine is print, fill in by hand, sign, scan, email. You can skip the printer entirely: open the form in Fill & sign, type into it, sign it and download a finished PDF.
How smooth that is depends on what kind of form you've been sent. There are two kinds, plus one awkward exception.
Fillable forms and flat forms
A fillable form has real form fields built into the file. Whoever made it placed text boxes, checkboxes and drop-downs on the page, each with a name and a position. When you open it, a PDF reader knows exactly where you're allowed to type. Forms made in Acrobat, LibreOffice or a tool like Create forms are usually like this. The technical name is AcroForm.
A flat form is just a picture of a form, or a PDF where the lines and boxes are drawn on the page with no fields behind them. Scanned paper forms are always flat. So are many forms exported from Word without anyone adding fields. There's nothing to type into, so you place your own text on top of the page.
To tell which you have, open the file in Fill & sign and click inside one of the boxes. If it's fillable, the fields highlight and a cursor appears. If nothing happens, it's flat.
Filling a form on EddiesPDF
- Open Fill & sign and add your PDF.
- For a fillable form, click each field and type. Checkboxes, radio buttons and drop-downs work as you'd expect.
- For a flat form, pick "Add text", click where the answer goes and type. Drag the text box until it sits neatly on the line.
- For tick boxes on a flat form, use "Checkmark" or "X mark" and place it in the box. Match whatever the form asks for; some official forms specifically say to mark with an X.
- For dates, use "Add date" and pick a format. If the form says DD/MM/YYYY, choose that one. Mixing up 03/04 and 04/03 is a classic way to get a form sent back.
- Add your signature with "Add signature" (and "Initials" if every page needs initialling).
- Tick "Flatten form" if you want the answers fixed in place, then download.
"Copy to all pages" helps when the same thing (initials, a reference number) has to appear on every page. Undo and redo are there when you place something in the wrong spot.
None of this touches a server. The form stays in your browser tab, passport number and bank details included.
Signing it
"Add signature" gives you three ways in. "Draw" lets you sign with a mouse, trackpad or finger. "Type" sets your name in a script font. "Upload" takes a photo of your signature on paper (PNG, JPG or WebP). The image is used as it is, so crop it tightly, or use a PNG with a transparent background if you have one, so the signature doesn't sit in a white rectangle.
If you sign a lot of forms, "Save signature" keeps the signature in that browser on that device. It isn't stored on a server, so it won't follow you to your phone.
For signing on a phone specifically, the guide on signing a PDF on your phone goes through it step by step.
Why you'd flatten the form before sending
A filled-in fillable form still has live fields. Whoever receives it can click into a field and change what you typed, and some programs show field values differently from others (fonts change, long text gets cut off).
"Flatten form" turns the field values into ordinary page content. After that, the answers look the same in every reader and can't be edited as fields any more. I'd flatten anything you sign: it's a final copy, it should look final.
Don't flatten if the other side has asked for a form they can still edit, or if their system reads the field values automatically (some HR and government upload portals do). If in doubt, ask, or send both. If you already have a filled form you want to fix in place, the separate Flatten PDF tool does only that.
XFA forms: the ones that show up blank
Some forms, often from government agencies and large organisations, were built with Adobe LiveCycle Designer as XFA forms. XFA describes the form in XML inside the PDF, and only Adobe's own software has ever fully supported it. Chrome, Firefox, Preview on Mac, the iPhone Files app and nearly every non-Adobe tool either show an empty page or a message along the lines of "Please wait... If this message is not eventually replaced by the proper contents of the document, your PDF viewer may not be able to display this type of document."
That message is the giveaway. If a form looks empty or tells you to wait forever, it's probably XFA.
Fill & sign doesn't support XFA. Some XFA files also contain regular AcroForm fields as a fallback; in that case you'll see a note that the XFA part will be removed when you fill the regular fields. That can work, but the form may lose calculations or validation the issuer built in, and some portals reject the result.
For a pure XFA form, the reliable answer is to download the free Adobe Acrobat Reader on a computer and fill it there. It's the one case where I'd send you to another app rather than fight the file.
Making your own fillable form
If you're on the other side and need people to fill in your form, Create forms adds real fields to any PDF: text fields, checkboxes, radio buttons, drop-down lists and signature boxes. Its "Detect" button turns blank lines and boxes on the page into fields, which saves a lot of dragging on a long form.
Open it somewhere else first
Open the downloaded file in a different app from the one you used, ideally whatever the recipient is likely to use (Acrobat Reader or a browser). Look at every page. Text placed on a flat form sometimes ends up slightly off the line, and a long answer in a small fillable field can be cut off. Also check the date format one more time, and that the signature landed on the right page. It's a two-minute check and it saves the "can you resend page 3" email.
Also useful: Create forms · Flatten PDF
