Filling in Forms that are PDF (?}

[Mikeo512]

Doesn’t happen often so don’t want the trouble and expense of a full-blown Adobe product. But other than printing and neat handwriting, is there a software solution or work-around for form filling?

 

[Jimmysb]

Doesn’t happen often so don’t want the trouble and expense of a full-blown Adobe product. But other than printing and neat handwriting, is there a software solution or work-around for form filling?

If the form has been produced correctly, (as an on-line form) then you should be able to fill the form in on your computer via Adobe Reader, however if not you could try to convert it to Word, but this does not always work well.

 

[Randy B. Singer]

Doesn’t happen often so don’t want the trouble and expense of a full-blown Adobe product. But other than printing and neat handwriting, is there a software solution or work-around for form filling?

Preview (part of the Mac OS), can easily do this. Preview is a ridiculously useful app, that is often overlooked because it's abilities aren't evident on the surface.

You can find Preview in your Applications folder. You can't use it to erase existing text and replace that text, but you can use it to insert new text, in any font, any color, any size, anywhere in the document where there is space, anywhere on the page. Here's how:

- Open your new PDF in Preview
- Click on the Markup button in Preview's toolbar
- Click on the Text button in the Markup toolbar.

TUTORIAL: The Mac Preview PDF Markup Tools
https://macmost.com/the-mac-preview-pdf-markup-tools.html

TUTORIAL: How To Sign PDF Documents In Preview On Your Mac
https://macmost.com/how-to-sign-pdf-documents-in-preview-on-your-mac.html

There is an even easier product for filling in PDF forms, and it too is free, but it only works on older Intel Macs:

FormulatePro (free)
http://code.google.com/p/formulatepro/
(Allows you to fill in PDF forms on-screen and print them. Even locked ones.)
Note: This application is not 64-bit and can’t be run under Mac OS 10.15 Catalina and later.

 

[Randy B. Singer]

)

 

[MacBiter]

I second what Randy said about Preview - you can not only annotate PDFs with text and other things like lines, shapes, arrows, etc of a thickness and colour of your choosing, you can do the same with images too!

And while you can't delete text and replace it, you CAN fill in a rectangular shape over the relevant text with the dimensions and colour of the document's background, then add a text box over it with a font and size as near as you can get to the original (and if what you want to insert is more than what you 'deleted', you could always put an asterisk at the end of the text, then add a new text box in a blank area, and start its text with another asterisk; clumsy perhaps, but it's amazing what you can achieve).

 

[jpdemers]

Preview can't open all pdf documents ... some require Adobe Reader. I've never had a problem filling out forms in Reader, but Adobe has crippled it so that, in every other respect, it has fewer capabilities than Preview. Try to do anything else, and you're invited to pay for the privilege.

One caveat about Preview: If you fill out a pdf form with Preview, and save it, it won't be formatted in quite the same way that Adobe Reader would have done. As a result, if you upload the filled-out form to a website that expects "pure" Adobe pdfs, your entries may not show up at the receiving end. I've gotten around this with PDFwriter - it installs like any print driver, but "prints" to a plain vanilla pdf file that can't lose your entries.

Little-known trick in Preview: open two pdfs in two windows, display thumbnails in the sidebars, and you can copy pages from one document to the other by dragging the thumbnails. You can also delete a page by deleting the thumbnail.

 

[MacBiter]

1. Interesting - I've NEVER encountered a pdf that Preview won't open.

2. If you use Preview to alter a pdf, then save it, it's worth contacting whoever is expecting the amended document to say it's not been altered using Adobe so it might look different at their end.

Is PDFwriter a free app?.

 

[Mikeo512]

Thanks a lot ... as usual some super replies via this forum.
Really great to have such a knowledgeable crowd always ready to help and suggest.
M

 

[Randy B. Singer]

Is PDFwriter a free app?.

Yes!

RWTS-PDFWriter (free)
https://github.com/rodyager/RWTS-PDFwriter
(For macOS 11.0+.)

 

[Randy B. Singer]

For those interesting in all that Preview can do, Apple offers a free users guide:

Preview User Guide (free)
View PDFs and images in Preview on Mac
Preview User Guide for Mac

Preview allows you to:

a) highlight (in any color), strike through or underline text
b) encircle anything on the page with a lasso of any shape, size or color
c) add marginal notes (in a side column) of any length, anywhere in the document
d) add new text in any font, any color, any size, anywhere in the document where there is space
e) individual pages can be dragged out of or into the document or deleted from the document
f) convert to a PostScript file which can be edited and re-converted to PDF
g) add and edit hyperlinks in a PDF file
h) combine multiple PDF's

The only things that you cannot do to a PDF in Preview is move, alter or delete any existing marks on the page whatsoever. (At least not easily.) For that you need a true PDF editor.

 

[Raz0rEdge]

I use Preview for all of my needs, and it opens the files and can edit them no problem. Where I've run into a few issues is with printing. Some PDFs just don't print properly through Preview, while Acrobat Reader prints it as it should be.

 

[jpdemers]

Example of a pdf form that Preview cannot open:

https://www.uspto.gov/sites/default/files/documents/IDS_June2024.pdf

Websites that are programmed to extract data from pdf forms, rather than just save them for a human to read later, can fail to extract text entered into forms that Preview does appear to handle. I suspect that this happens when the recipient uses software, rather than people, to load your entries into a database. You may not even know that the process failed. For important matters, or if there's any doubt, the prudent thing is to use Reader.

 

[MacBiter]

Example of a pdf form that Preview cannot open:

https://www.uspto.gov/sites/default/files/documents/IDS_June2024.pdf

Websites that are programmed to extract data from pdf forms, rather than just save them for a human to read later, can fail to extract text entered into forms that Preview does appear to handle. I suspect that this happens when the recipient uses software, rather than people, to load your entries into a database. You may not even know that the process failed. For important matters, or if there's any doubt, the prudent thing is to use Reader.

Are you talking about the "Please wait..." message in Preview?

 

[MacInWin]

What I get is the "Please wait.." message and then nothing downloads. No further network activity. That sequence tells me there is something not happening on the other end.

EDIT: I also tried Brave and got the exact same result, so it's not Safari, either.

 

[pm-r]

Example of a pdf form that Preview cannot open:
https://www.uspto.gov/sites/default/files/documents/IDS_June2024.pdf

I would say the page and even other Pages by shortening the address for that site provides the:

"404 error - page not found"​

I would say the page doesn't even exist.



- Patrick
=======

 

[ferrarr]

Example of a pdf form that Preview cannot open:

https://www.uspto.gov/sites/default/files/documents/IDS_June2024.pdf

Websites that are programmed to extract data from pdf forms, rather than just save them for a human to read later, can fail to extract text entered into forms that Preview does appear to handle. I suspect that this happens when the recipient uses software, rather than people, to load your entries into a database. You may not even know that the process failed. For important matters, or if there's any doubt, the prudent thing is to use Reader.

How did you get to that page?

 

[Slydude]

This may be an issue with the form that is being used. Since Preview couldn't open it I tried PDF Studio 2024, That didn't work either but it identified the type of form being used (Lifecycle Dynamic XFA) and a link additional information. This appears to be an older depreciated method of doing certain kinds of forms.

Unsupported: LiveCycle Dynamic XFA forms – PDF Studio Knowledge Base