Fill a PDF form
Type into the form’s real fields, tick its boxes, and download a filled copy — without Acrobat, and without your document ever leaving this device. Filling needs a free account; what you type still never leaves your browser.
How to fill a PDF form without Acrobat or uploading it
- Open the form — drag and drop it or browse from your device. It is read directly in your browser, not uploaded.
- Fill it in — the form’s own fields are highlighted on the page. Click one and type; checkboxes, radio buttons and dropdowns work the way you expect. The panel keeps a running count of how many are done and jumps you to any field you can’t find.
- Choose flattened or fillable — flattened is the default and is what you want for anything you’re sending on.
- Download — your original file is untouched; the filled copy is written fresh.
Filled properly, not typed on top
Most browser-based “form fillers” simply draw text boxes over the page. That works until the alignment drifts, and it never produces a real filled form. This tool reads the document’s actual AcroForm structure and writes the values back into the fields themselves, then regenerates each field’s appearance so it looks right in every viewer.
Only the fields you actually changed are rewritten. A field you left alone keeps the exact appearance its designer gave it — a detail that matters on forms where the issuer styled fields carefully, and one that naive fillers get wrong by touching everything.
Because the form structure has to survive, page reordering and deletion are switched off in this mode. Rotation still works. If you need to rearrange pages, do that first in the PDF editor and fill the result.
Filling a PDF that has no fillable fields
A great many forms are not forms at all. Anything printed and scanned, and plenty of documents exported straight from a word processor, is a flat page that merely looks like one: there are no fields to click, only lines and boxes drawn on the paper. The tool tells you when it finds none rather than leaving you clicking at nothing.
The way through is the Text tool — type directly onto the page and drag each line onto its blank, adjusting size so it sits on the ruled line rather than above it. Ticks go on with the Draw tool, and a signature with the Image or Draw tool. What you download is an ordinary flat PDF, which is what an office expecting a scanned return wants anyway.
The same route handles an XFA form — the LiveCycle-built kind common in Indian and Canadian government paperwork, where the fields live in an XML layer no browser can write back to. Only Acrobat Reader fills those natively; typing over the page and sending a flat copy is the workaround that usually gets accepted.
Private by design
A filled form is one of the most sensitive files most people handle — it carries your name, address, identity numbers and often your bank details. Nothing here is uploaded: the file is read, filled and written back entirely inside this tab, and a Content-Security-Policy blocks the page from talking to any third-party server. Read more in our privacy policy.
Finishing the paperwork? Add your signature, merge the supporting documents, or password-protect the file before you email it.
Frequently asked questions
Can I fill a PDF form without uploading it?
Yes. The PDF is opened, filled and saved entirely inside your browser and never transmitted. A Content-Security-Policy makes the browser block requests to other origins, so the guarantee is enforced technically rather than just promised. That matters more here than with most tools — filled forms usually carry a name, an address, an account number or an ID.
Why do I need an account for this tool?
Because it writes a changed version of a document, and that group of tools is offered to signed-in members who have accepted our Acceptable Use Policy — the undertaking to use them only on files you own or are authorised to modify. A free account is enough. Your answers are not part of that: the form is filled and saved entirely in your browser, nothing you type is ever uploaded, and we record only that the tool was opened, never what you put in it.
What does "flatten the form" mean, and should I?
Flattening bakes your answers into the page itself, so the fields stop being fields. Do it when you are sending the form onward: it can't be edited back, and it looks the same in every viewer, including ones that render form fields badly. Untick it when you want to keep a working copy you can revise later — for example a template you refile every quarter.
The tool says there are no fillable fields. What now?
The PDF is a flat page that only looks like a form — very common with scanned or printed-then-digitised documents. Pick the Text tool in the toolbar and type straight onto the page, positioning each line where the blank is. The result downloads as an ordinary PDF.
Why won't my form open — it says XFA?
XFA forms (usually built with Adobe LiveCycle, and common in Indian and Canadian government paperwork) keep their fields in a separate XML layer that browsers cannot write back to. Only Adobe Acrobat Reader fills them properly. You can still type over the page here with the Text tool and download a flat copy, which many offices accept.
Can I sign the form as well?
Yes. Use the Image tool to drop a signature graphic onto a signature line, or the Draw tool to sign directly on the page. If signing is the main thing you need, the dedicated Sign PDF tool has a proper signature pad with saved signatures.
Does it handle checkboxes, radio buttons and dropdowns?
Yes — every standard AcroForm field type: text boxes, multi-line text areas, checkboxes, radio button groups, dropdowns and list boxes. Radio groups stay in sync across the page, and a field that appears in several places (like a name repeated in a header) fills everywhere at once.
Can I type in Hindi or another Indian language?
Yes. Text outside the Latin range is written with an embedded Unicode font, so Devanagari and similar scripts survive the download instead of coming out blank. Complex scripts are not reshaped, so a few conjuncts may render differently from a native form editor.
Some fields are greyed out — why can't I edit them?
They are marked read-only in the document itself, usually because they are calculated totals or fields the issuer locked. The tool leaves them exactly as the issuer set them rather than quietly overwriting them.
Related pdf tools
Shrink large PDFs — runs entirely in your browser, files never leave your machine.
Combine PDF files into one, with page reordering — files never leave your machine.
Extract pages, split by ranges, or save every page separately — all in your browser.
Turn Markdown, JSON, XML, YAML, CSV, HTML, plain text — or a stack of images — into a polished PDF, all in your browser.