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A good PDF form needs to be easy for a recipient to fill online. To achieve this, the form has a fillable field, which is like a box on the form where the PDF creator designates as able to be typed in, even if the recipient isn’t using a PDF editor. You can learn more about how fillable fields work here.
Not all PDFs will have fillable fields, though. If you need to fill out a form and there aren’t sections that are marked fillable, use PDF.Live’s editor to enter in information on the PDF. Your other option is printing out the document, writing on it (or typing, if you have a typewriter!), and then scanning it, but this is time-consuming and inconvenient in today’s digital age.
This guide will walk you through filling out a PDF online using the PDF.Live editor. PDF.Live’s editor and form filler works in Chrome, Safari, Firefox and other major internet browsers. The PDF.Live editor is free to try for 7 days, once you set up an account. You can try filling out your PDF online for free and, if you like it, select one of our affordable plans.
How To Fill Out a PDF Online?
- Upload Your PDF to the PDF.Live Editor.
Drag and drop your PDF to the editor or click Select File to Edit and navigate to where your PDF form is stored on your computer.
Once you’ve uploaded your PDF, you’ll immediately be taken to the PDF.Live editor. If your form is a .doc, .docx, or other file format, you’ll need to first convert it into a PDF, as the PDF.Live editor only supports PDF files.
Search through PDF.Live’s file conversion services to find the right converter for you.
- Select Add Text under the Popular Editing Tools tab.
The PDF.Live editor will open the Annotate tab in the editor and select the Free Text tool. This tool can be found again under the top bar where the large uppercase T is located.
- Click and drag in your document where you’d like the text to be on the form.
This will create a text box on your PDF that you can type in. You can adjust the boundaries of the text box by clicking and dragging the blue circles around the perimeter of the text box. Select the Hand tool at the top of the PDF.Live editor and click your text box to drag it to a new location on your PDF.
The PDF.Live editor will immediately open the formatting settings of your text so you can change the font, text size, orientation, and color to better match your PDF.
By default, the PDF.Live editor will have a black text box with 12 point font. In the above screenshot, this doesn’t quite match the size of this form, so we can change the formatting settings of our text to better match the form.
With bold text, Times New Roman, and 10 pt font, the text better matches the form. You may notice that each time you log into your PDF.Live account, the last setting you used for text is your default option.
- Export, Save, or Download your PDF once it’s been filled out.
You will see your changes reflected in the downloaded or saved PDF. With the PDF.Live editor, you can also create a fillable PDF with fields that are designated as fillable by a recipient. If you want, you can also create a fillable form directly from a Word Doc using the PDF.Live editor.