Make PDF Fillable

How to make a PDF form fillable

1. Choose the form: a scanned paper form, a photo of one saved as a PDF, or a form made on a computer (Word, a printer's PDF). Its blanks are looked for at once, page by page.
2. Check the fields. Each one is drawn on the page as a coloured box with its name; the ones the tool was unsure of are marked "Check". Tap a field to rename it, change its kind, move it or resize it. Add a field it missed with "+ Add a field" (drag a box where the answer goes), or delete one it should not have made. Undo and Redo are there for every change.
3. Tap Save. The fields are added to your PDF as a real form, which opens in Chrome, Adobe Acrobat Reader, phone PDF apps and Fill PDF Form. Download it, share it, or fill it in straight away with "Fill it here".

Everything happens in your browser: the form is never uploaded to ap7am or anywhere else. Your pages are not redrawn or changed: the fields are laid over them, so the form looks exactly as it did. The new file keeps your form's name, such as application-fillable.pdf.

What it finds

• Lines to write on: underlines, dotted lines and typed underscores (Name ______).
• Boxes: a box for an answer, and tall boxes for several lines (an address).
• Letter boxes: a row of boxes, one letter in each, for names, Aadhaar, PIN code, mobile numbers and dates (DD MM YYYY), drawn sharing their sides or as separate small squares in a row (grey words printed over them, such as SURNAME, are fine). The field gets one letter a box, so typed letters land in their boxes. Boxes printed in groups with gaps, such as an Aadhaar number in three groups of 4, become one field a group ("Aadhaar no (1 of 3)"), so each digit still lands in its box.
• Tick boxes, square or a little wider than tall, drawn or printed as a box character (☐): two to four options (Male / Female, Enrolment OR Update, అవును / కాదు) become one choice named after the question; five or more, or a question that says "one or more", become separate tick boxes; a box on its own (I agree) becomes a tick box. Each one's kind, and the choice a button belongs to, can be changed in the field's panel.
• Empty table cells, such as a table of qualifications to fill in: each empty cell becomes a field named from its column's heading. A cell with a label and room after it (Street: ______, in a form laid out as a table) gets a field over that room, named from the label; an answer cell split under small captions (Country Code | Number) gets a field under each; headings and instructions get none.

Each field is named from the words printed beside it or above it, in English or Telugu, and its kind is guessed from them: a date, a mobile number (10 digits), an Aadhaar number (12), a PIN code (6), an email. A star (*) beside a label makes the field required. On a scanned form, the labels are read with the same Telugu and English reader as OCR PDF; its models download once (about 6 MB) and stay in your browser. When a label cannot be read clearly, the field gets a plain name ("Date", "Field 3") rather than a wrong one, and is marked to check.

What it leaves alone

• Boxes and lines with something already written or printed in them, and tables full of facts.
• Words that are underlined, the page's border, and lines between sections.
• A box for a photo, and a line to sign on: they are shown, greyed, so you can make them fields if you wish. Paste a photo with Edit PDF, and sign with Sign PDF.
• The fields a form already has: they are kept, and a blank found over one is left out. New fields get names the form does not use yet.

What it cannot do

• Every blank on every form: forms vary, and a faint, broken or hand-drawn line can be missed, or a box found where there is none. Look over every page before you save: add what is missing, delete what is wrong.
• Tilted scans and phone photos: a slightly tilted scan is straightened while it is read, but the fields are level, so on a tilted page they sit a little off at their ends. Straighten the scan first with Straighten Scanned PDF; for a photo taken at an angle, make it flat first with JPG to PDF (drag the corners onto the paper's).
• Sideways pages: a page whose text runs down the page is skipped. Turn it upright with Rotate PDF first.
• Round option bubbles on a scan (○ Yes ○ No) and handwritten forms are not found; add those fields by hand.
• Checks inside the PDF: no scripts are added (some portals refuse PDFs that carry them), so a date or number field does not stop someone typing letters. Fill PDF Form checks letter limits and required fields.
• Adobe XFA forms made for Adobe Reader only cannot take new fields. Print them to PDF first.

Questions

Made with pdf-lib (MIT licence) and Mozilla's pdf.js (Apache 2.0 licence); labels on scans are read with Tesseract (tesseract.js, Apache 2.0) and its Telugu and English models; locked PDFs are opened with qpdf (Apache 2.0). All run in your browser. Licences.