Manage Master Form

Discover how the Master Form feature in PlatoForms simplifies the process of reusing fields across multiple PDFs.

What’s Master Form?

Master Form allows you to achieve efficient reuse of fields, such as a Signature, in multiple PDFs. File Upload fields stay on the online form; they cannot be placed on a linked PDF.

Want a video instead of text? Check out the tutorial below:

The steps are straightforward:

• Create the Master Form, add fields, and customize their properties.
• Link the desired PDF to the Master Form, and easily incorporate the fields onto the PDF.

Once the integration is complete, you can publish the PDF with the added fields, creating a PDF form that collects user input.

Master Forms simplify form creation, save time, and maintain consistency in your PDF forms.

Create a Master Form

Follow these steps:

1. Log in to your PlatoForms account.

2. On the Dashboard, click + Start to build in the bottom left corner to begin building.

   

3. In the pop-up window, select Master Form.

   

   After selecting this option, you’ll be taken to the Master Form’s form builder. For more information about the form builder, refer to Explore the form builder.

Edit the master form

To edit your master form for later reuse, follow these steps:

Add fields

1. On the form buidler of the Master Form, locate the Toolbar on the left.

   

2. Click the field icons to add desired fields to your Master Form.

Edit field properties

After adding a field to your Master Form, you’ll see its widget appear in left Field Panel with a blue border. The right panel will display the field’s properties.

• To view the properties for each field, click its widget in the left panel.

• To edit a field’s properties, click on the field widget in the left panel, and make changes in the panel on the right.

• To rearrange the field order, drag and drop the widget in the left panel to adjust their position.

Learn more about the Field Panel here.

Preview Master Form

Before linking the Master Form to your PDF, it’s a good idea to preview your Master Form. To do that, click the Preview & Design button in the builder’s top menu bar, to the right of the logo and Home area.

Upload and link PDFs with Master Form

1. Go to the Dashboard.

2. Find the desired Master Form. Hover over its card and click Link PDFs (or the “N PDFs” button once PDFs are linked), then click Link New PDF in the panel to upload the PDF.

   

3. Upload the PDF file.

   After uploading the PDF, you’ll access the form builder for the PDF form. Here, you can edit fields and their properties.

To generate only the PDF that matches an answer, combine linked PDFs with form logic. See Can PlatoForms generate different PDFs based on user input?

Watch demo Generate different PDFs based on user input

Reuse fields

To reuse the fields in the Master Form:

1. In the form builder, hover over to the desired field widget.

2. Click Add To PDF.

   

   The field appears, highlighted in red, at the top left of the part of the PDF currently in view in the right PDF Form Area, on the page shown there (not always page 1). Several added fields line up side by side. Until you drag or resize it, the field moves along when you scroll the PDF, so scroll to the right page first.

3. In the right PDF Form Area, drag and drop the field to an ideal position. You can also drag a field from the left straight onto a spot on the PDF.

   Note

   You can add widgets multiple times to a PDF. For instance, if you need a personal signature on each page, add the same signature widget to every page. When the final PDF is created, it will have the signature on each page.

Publish Master Form

A Master Form is published at two levels: the Master Form itself, and each linked PDF form.

1. Publish the Master Form: click Publish in the Master Form builder’s top menu bar.
2. Publish each linked PDF form: open it from the Link PDFs panel and click Publish in its builder. If the Master Form is not published yet, publishing a linked form takes you back to the Master Forms dashboard without a Share window.

The form stays unavailable until at least one linked PDF form is published: its link and embeds show the form-unavailable page, and pages already open cannot submit. Until then, Share shows the warning “Warning: Form is still unavailable because no linked form is published yet. Publish at least one linked form to make this form available.” The same happens again when the last published linked form is stopped or trashed. Submitting or updating an entry through the API or an AI assistant is refused too, with the error “This form is unavailable because none of its linked forms is published”.

Once published, you share the Master Form’s link, never a linked PDF form’s own link. You get a Public URL, Embed Script, or QRCode for easy sharing:

• Public URL

  A direct link to your published form. Share this link with others, and they can access and fill out the form using their web browser.

• Embed Script

  A piece of code you can add to your website. This code will display your PDF form directly on your page, letting users fill it out without leaving your site.

• QRCode

  A simple way to share PDF forms. Display the QR Code on your site or materials, and users can scan it with their mobile devices to open and fill out the form.

No matter how many PDFs you link to the Master Form, the sharing URL remains singular.

Manage submission

Managing Master Form submissions in PlatoForms follows the same process as with other forms. You will receive email and system notifications, and you can view the submissions on the Submissions page. The only difference is that a submission can produce several PDFs, one for each linked PDF form. On the Submissions page, View PDF lists each PDF, and you can also download them together as a zip. With Merge PDFs into one at final step and Delete individual PDFs after merging on (in the Link PDFs panel), there is only one merged PDF.