How to fill out a PDF form without printing it

4 min read · Updated November 2, 2026

Printing a form, filling it in by hand and scanning it back is slow, and the result is often hard to read. You can do the whole thing on screen instead. How depends on what kind of PDF you have.

Two kinds of PDF form

Fillable forms have built-in fields: boxes you can type into, checkboxes, and dropdowns. Government, school and HR forms are often like this. Flat forms are just a picture of lines and boxes, usually because someone scanned a paper form or exported it without fields.

You don’t need to work out which one you have. Open it in the Fill PDF form tool. If it has fields, they show up as blue boxes and you’ll see a message saying how many there are.

Filling a fillable form

1. Open the PDF.
2. Tap the first blue box and type. Use the Tab key on a computer to jump to the next field.
3. Tick checkboxes and choose from dropdowns the same way.
4. Sign it with the Sign tool if there’s a signature line.
5. Tap Save PDF.

When you save, your answers are flattened: written into the page itself. That means they look the same in every viewer, on every phone, and when printed, and nobody can accidentally change them.

Filling a flat form

1. Open the PDF and choose Add text.
2. Tap just above each line and type. Use the font size menu to match the form; 10 or 11 point fits most lines.
3. To tick a box, type an X in it.
4. Use Select to nudge any answer into place. On a computer, the arrow keys move it one point at a time.
5. Save.

When it won’t work

A few government forms use an older format called XFA that only Adobe Reader can fill. You’ll usually see a message like “Please wait… If this message is not eventually replaced…” instead of the form. For those, use Adobe Reader.

Before you send it

• Open the saved file and read every answer once.
• Check the file name: lastname-application.pdf beats form(3).pdf.
• If the file is too big for an upload form, run it through Compress PDF.