Create a fillable PDF form

What this actually adds

Most forms people are sent are not fillable. Someone designed them in a word processor, printed to PDF, and the boxes are just lines drawn on a page. There is nothing to click, so recipients end up printing, writing, and scanning back.

This tool adds real AcroForm fields — the same kind used by tax forms and bank applications. Once added, anyone can type into the document in a browser, in Preview on a Mac, or in Acrobat. No special software, and no account.

Naming fields properly

Every field needs a unique name. Two fields sharing one are treated by the PDF format as a single field shown twice — type in one and the other changes to match. That behaviour is occasionally useful, and almost never what you want when placing boxes on a page, so the tool blocks duplicates rather than quietly merging them.

Names also matter downstream. Anything that reads answers back out of the completed form — a script, a spreadsheet import, our own Fill PDF tool — uses them as labels. “Full name” and “Date of birth” will make sense in six months; “Text 1” and “Text 2” will not.

Placement tips

• Draw the box slightly taller than the printed line so text does not sit on top of it.
• For a row of boxes, keep the heights consistent — mismatched field heights are the most visible sign of a form assembled by hand.
• Checkboxes want to be roughly square and about the size of the printed box they sit in.
• Use a dropdown when the answer must be one of a known set. It prevents typos and makes the responses far easier to process.