HowtofillinaPDFformandsenditproperly

Interactive forms and flat ones

An interactive form has real fields built into the file. Click and type, tab between them, and the values are stored as data on the document.

A flat form is a picture of a form — usually a scan, or an export that lost its fields. Clicking does nothing, because there is nothing there. This is the kind most people hit, and the kind that sends them looking for a printer.

Filling a flat form without printing it

You do not need the fields. Type directly onto the page where the fields would have been, place a signature, and save.

• Set the text size to match the printed labels — a size that looks right beside the form's own type reads as filled in rather than annotated.
• Place text on the line rather than through it.
• Sign by drawing, or drop in a signature image if you keep one.

Printing, filling by hand, scanning and emailing produces a worse-looking document, a much larger file, and takes ten times as long.

Flatten before you send

This is the step people miss. A filled interactive form is still interactive: the recipient can edit your answers, and can clear the whole form with one wrong click.

Flattening renders the values into the page so they become part of it. What you sent is what they see, and neither of you can change it by accident.

Before it goes

• Read it back at 100% — a date in the wrong box is easy to miss while typing and obvious afterwards.
• Check the file size if a portal is involved, and compress at the end rather than the beginning.
• Keep an unflattened copy for yourself if you may need to correct something later.