Video Tutorial: How to Fill PDF Form Online

In the last video, we introduced what Platoforms was about and we also demonstrated how to build an online web form. In this video, we will be talking how to fill PDF form online. It is fillable from the web browser and unlike the online web form, this type of form looks exactly the same as the original PDF when opened. Each field in the PDF can be filled in online and submitted, producing a PDF copy of a filled out form. It is suitable for PDFs that has a more complex format with many descriptions or if the content of the form is affected by the format etc. As compared to the online web form, it is much more detailed and retains the image of the original PDF, however, unlike the web form, it is not as mobile compatible and may take longer to load this PDF as the form background.

Now let’s try building a PDF online form.

Log in to the account and select ‘create an online form for existing PDF’ Upload your PDF and select the option on the left for PDF online form

the form editor has 2 parts, with the right being your PDF, and the left showing the number of pages of your PDF. Now let’s add some elements to show how we can build this form.

Click ‘input’ on the top of the page. A yellow box will pop up on the right. Drag the box to where writing should be and adjust the box by clicking on it once and dragging the dots. when the element is selected, the left side of the page should show the form attributes of this element.

Generally, the attributes panel is divided into 3 sections: form attributes, PDF attributes and preview. Here ‘Name’ can be inputted as the label and ‘fill your full name’ as help text. These changes are shown in the preview. You can also change things such as font size, colour and spacing.

in the preview section, you can fill in the sample text which only shows up when the PDF or form is previewed and not in the actual online form.

Let’s add another element. Click ‘dropdown’ on the element option on the top of the page. Again, drag the yellow box on the right to where it belongs and resize. Here ‘City’ can be inputted as the label. Each available option for this dropdown such as Sydney, Melbourne etc can then be added by clicking ‘add menu item’ and filling in these item labels. The options can be seen when the pointer hovers over the dropdown element. This option can also be done for the ‘State’ section.

You can preview the format any time by clicking ‘preview form’ on the top left. You will see a sample form of what your customers will be filling out. This form can be filled out to simulate how your customers will be filling it out when they receive the form. When you are finished, you can click the submit button on the bottom. This page says you have successfully submitted your form. A sample of the final submitted PDF can be viewed by clicking ‘preview PDF’. This is a sample of how the PDF from your customers will look.

when you think everything is good to go, click ‘publish’ on the top left button. You can share the URL or embed the form into your website. Submitted PDFs from your customer will be sent to you via email. They can also be viewed here in submissions.

That’s the end of this tutorial, thank you for watching.