Is there software that can fill PDF forms?

Question

I have some PDFs which are actually forms, with fields to fill. Is there some software that can fill those fields?

score 82 · Answer 1 · edited Jul 05 '21 at 11:07

82

Xournal will allow you to draw/write anything on the top layer of any PDF document and then export it back to PDF. It doesn't allow to actually fill PDF forms, but if writing text / drawing on top of your PDF is enough for you, you may find it useful.

You can install it from the Ubuntu software.

To install from terminal, use the following command:

sudo apt-get install xournal

Note: Xournal is not anymore actively developed. There is an actively developed fork, Xournal++.

edited Jul 05 '21 at 11:07

Archisman Panigrahi

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answered Sep 04 '12 at 13:46

Dima L.

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But it loses the vector information of the original PDF, resulting in a lower-quality image. – Richard Dec 09 '12 at 21:39
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Xournal does not actually fill forms. – RolandiXor Feb 27 '13 at 16:06
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You can't fill in meant-to-be-filled text fields (and those get lost on export in my experience) , but you can use the text editor tool (and aim relatively high, so the bottom of that I-shaped mouse cursor is actually the middle height of your text to be). – good enough to fill out some arbitrary tax forms or parcel labels... – Frank N Dec 10 '18 at 17:30

score 59 · Answer 2 · edited Apr 28 '11 at 15:03

59

Document Viewer (Evince) SHOULD be able to fill in forms, IF the document is a fillable form. Not all documents are fillable! If document does not support form filling the form, you should use tools like PDFedit or OpenOffice Draw

You can find them in Software Center

edited Apr 28 '11 at 15:03

Chethan S.

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answered Mar 06 '11 at 19:59

gsedej

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I don't think evince works. When I save a form I have filled in the information I have entered is lost. okular appears to work however. – Simd Jun 06 '14 at 08:12
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Indeed, evince doesn't work. – Rho Jun 04 '15 at 14:28
Saved changes are not lost for me in Evince 3.10.3... but the saved changes are not visible in Acrobat :( – Brian Z Jan 11 '16 at 15:45
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Evince appears to be able to edit PDF's that are fillable without any issues. This is Evince version 3.16.1 running under Ubuntu 15.10. The application is called Document Viewer ("Evince" shows up under Help/About). – bgoodr Mar 19 '16 at 03:39
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Evince 3.18.2 let me very easily put text into a form on a US tax document and save it. Opening the file in xpdf, I can see the edits. Not sure if it's filling the forms the "right way", but the spacing and font look great in this limited test. – Colin Mar 29 '16 at 22:50
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I've had evince work on some pdf forms, including tax forms, but not others, including university paperwork. Evince should not be considered a reliable option. – Jeff Burdges Aug 05 '16 at 09:18
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I'm using opensuse and evince doesn't work for me. Only the text in the currently focused textbox appears, every other textboxes are blank. – phuclv Feb 15 '17 at 15:43
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To add to Jeff's comment: I used Evince to fill out the IRS' 1040EZ tax return and it worked beautifully. However, a lot of other PDF viewers then either didn't display the things I put it in the form or, in the case of Adobe Acrobat, didn't open the PDF in the first place. To circumvent this, I had Evince print the file to another file (another PDF) so the form contents would just be regular text (and obviously couldn't be changed anymore, but I just wanted to print out the file on a different computer, so for me that was ok). – balu Apr 13 '17 at 09:48
@LưuVĩnhPhúc this just worked for me on Ubuntu 17.04, Evince 3.24.0 and a PDF generated from Latex: https://tex.stackexchange.com/a/366238/19083 I just had to save the modified PDF before changes become visible on the file. – Ciro Santilli OurBigBook.com Apr 23 '17 at 14:26
Just used LibreOffice Draw. Worked fine. – jdthood May 25 '18 at 14:16
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@jdthood does libreoffice draw actually able to fill forms? or you just edit pdf and place the content? Evince seems really works with the xfa form elements. – Oshan Wisumperuma Jun 06 '21 at 16:10
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Maybe older versions of Document Viewer didn't work. But, Document Viewer 3.36.10 for Ubuntu 20.04 works. I checked a saved document. All filled fields are still available. Okular is good too. But it didn't allow me to select from dropbox. The only thing I could do was drawing on top of it. In some cases, Okular filled forms don't show the text and signature when previewing on the browser. – akalanka Aug 05 '21 at 17:18

score 28 · Answer 3 · edited Apr 13 '17 at 12:23

28

I have tried Evince, Okular, PDf Chain and other not so pretty ones. The one that comes closer in the Ubuntu Software Repositories is Okular with an option to "Show Forms" which depending on the form it will or not show. I tried all of those trying to solve this question: How to fill out the forms and save the inputs in this tax report pdf file

The only one that suggest working and has been tested is PDF Edit from here http://sourceforge.net/projects/pdfedit/ and Acrobat 10 from here http://www.adobe.com/products/acrobat.html

I was actually surprised to learn this since there are a lot of PDF Viewers but less editors and even lesser ones that can perform Form filling and such.

edited Apr 13 '17 at 12:23

Community

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answered Apr 28 '11 at 15:32

Luis Alvarado

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Quite frankly, even with expensive Windows software like PDF Revu I am unable to edit all forms. Seems the standard isn't clear enough or not enough people stick by it?! – 0xC0000022L Jul 06 '15 at 17:24
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Okular after opening announced that file has XFA forms that are unsupported (tax report file in Poland). – reducing activity Apr 26 '17 at 09:39
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@MateuszKonieczny Hi friend, might you have a PDF form that I could use for testing. If you do have one, please feel free to send it to luisalvarado@ubuntu.com so I can check which apps can work with it and update this answer with some updated results. Thank you. – Luis Alvarado Apr 26 '17 at 14:20
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@LuisAlvarado http://www.finanse.mf.gov.pl/documents/766655/1481810/IFT-1(13)_v1-0E.pdf or other from http://www.finanse.mf.gov.pl/pp/e-deklaracje/formularze/pit (ones linked by text in the red font). Unfortunately I prefer to keep my file private, as it an official tax-related document (I received it after filing taxes). BTW, I ended installing and using Adobe Reader that worked. – reducing activity Apr 26 '17 at 15:06
One nice feature of Okular is the ability to work with document layers. This can be a big plus aesthetically as it allows one to print w/o the buttons. – dat Feb 20 '21 at 02:30
Also Okular didn't work either. It was showing a message saying "XFA forms cannot be opened" or something like this.
Instead, MasterPDFEditor worked for me: https://www.how2shout.com/linux/how-to-install-master-pdf-editor-on-ubuntu-22-04-lts/
– Andrea Araldo Feb 19 '23 at 20:54

score 20 · Answer 4 · answered Sep 08 '16 at 22:19

20

2016 answer, since this still comes at the top of google: evince now fills in forms (including encrypted forms). I printed the result to file to save the filled-in version.

answered Sep 08 '16 at 22:19

isomorphismes

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For me this is the most helpful answer, since evince is the default "Document Viewer" in Ubuntu anyway. – ojdo Sep 16 '16 at 12:02
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Not all of them, XFA forms are unsupported and unlike Okular there is not even an error message. – reducing activity Apr 26 '17 at 09:41
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Last time I tried, Evince didn't allow me to save the form and continue filling in later. – user334639 Oct 08 '17 at 23:39
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I was able to save the form and continue filling it out later. But I recall the dialogs being a bit confusing, and it keeps the original file modification time on the form, which is bizarre and really bad practice. – nealmcb Jun 01 '18 at 21:39
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I can use evince (aka Document Viewer) on Debian to fill out the form. To save the filled out form, you can choose "Save a Copy" but overwrite the original. Unlike print-to-file, the form remains fillable if you need to correct a mistake. – roufamatic Sep 26 '18 at 20:40
I can fill in the boxes with evince, but the SIGN HERE box, I cannot type, nor draw my signature in, with evince. – Bram Sep 05 '23 at 19:51

score 14 · Answer 5 · edited Jul 02 '14 at 00:02

14

PDFEdit (Click To Install on 12.04 or earlier)

Just Launch it from application -> Graphics and then click "Add text"

enter image description here

Then just draw a box and type.

enter image description here

edited Jul 02 '14 at 00:02

gene_wood

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answered Mar 06 '11 at 10:59

Lincity

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I don't like web sites that try to install things on my computer; so if anybody else was a bit freaked out, you can just install the "pdfedit" package. The web site you linked to is legit, it just spooked me a bit. :) – Windigo Mar 06 '11 at 18:27
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@Windigo If you are referring to the Click to install link then that is perfectly fine as it will just fire up your Software Center where you can then click on Install to install the package. – Octavian Helm Mar 06 '11 at 19:54
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He was not asking for tool to edit PDF, but just to fill forms. – gsedej Mar 06 '11 at 19:55
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Well you CAN full forms using this even the forms which are unfillable can be filled using this. – Lincity Mar 07 '11 at 11:38
@Alaukik it is interesting.... "forms which are unfillable"... I don't know what that even means...do you mean allowing to fill read-only fields? – Fr0zenFyr Jul 09 '14 at 10:28
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@Fr0zenFyr I think Alaukik is referring to PDFs created as forms meant to be printed and filled out with pen on paper, but not created to show those form fields to an application that would allow you to fill it out electronically. This answer allows you to draw over any PDF, but an app with native PDF form field support will get my upvote for this question. – aquafunk Aug 07 '14 at 00:08
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pdfedit does not have a package anymore in 14.04. Couldn't find it. Theres this website, though: http://pdfedit.cz/en/index.html But the last update seems to have happened in 2012. – Hinz Sep 14 '15 at 07:05

score 14 · Answer 6 · answered Dec 01 '15 at 03:50

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update. "Master PDF Editor 3" enables pdf form fields to be entered by the user. It works well to fill forms, remove/add pages, reorder, add comments, etc. It should be listed in ubuntu software centre, else search for the deb file online.

answered Dec 01 '15 at 03:50

rob grune

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This has always worked best for me. It is commercial, but has a free version with some pro features disabled, but still allows the basics (annotate, split/merge etc. without any watermarks or the like) – DavidJ Jul 10 '17 at 00:25
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As of May 2018, there is now "Master PDF Editor 4". The free version does everything I need. From my (limited) tests I can confirm that it fills forms successfully, also where Ocular fails. – tglas May 09 '18 at 09:41
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I just tried Master PDF Editor 5. It has functions for filling forms, but they're not working with the form my accountant sent me. It's almost making sense to buy a commercial operating system at this point, which is very sad. – Michael Scheper Oct 11 '19 at 19:48
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Not open source, but a workable solution for XFA forms on Ubuntu. https://code-industry.net/free-pdf-editor/ – Al F Nov 05 '19 at 15:27
Still working in 2022, now version 5.8 – Luis Mar 14 '22 at 18:40
Wow, this name sounds sketchy as heck, but it works well. – Zach Bloomquist Jun 03 '22 at 21:17

score 10 · Answer 7 · edited Dec 03 '21 at 00:53

10

UPDATE 2019/04/23
The latest release for LibreOffice 6.2.2.2 now imports PDF files directly.

I have tried all the PDF apps in the Ubuntu repositories. All have been buggy and difficult to use.

If you want simply to fill in the blank boxes on a PDF form (such as many government forms), here is what I do [revised]:

Libreoffice menus: Format → Page Style... → Area → Bitmap
Click "add/import" button located in bottom left region of page
Navigate to your PDF file, and click "open" button to import
You should have the PDF in LO as a watermark image
To add text, use "text boxes" to overlay the text onto the page
Save as .odt and .pdf files.

Done.

edited Dec 03 '21 at 00:53

zx485

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answered Feb 20 '13 at 14:56

rob grune

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Rob, In step 2, do you mean Format/Page/Background/Graphic then choose the tiff file? If that is the case, it does not seem to work. I use Open Office 3.2. Otherwise, I do not see Page under Edit. Neither do I see watermark in Open Office. I hope you tested what you suggest. If you did, please provide the details again. Much appreciated. – Apr 10 '13 at 00:18
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After more than 2 years your first sentence is still mostly true, unfortunately. – Hinz Sep 14 '15 at 06:52
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Not all of them, XFA forms are unsupported and unlike Okular there is not even an error message. – reducing activity Apr 26 '17 at 09:42
This is way more cumbersome tha xournal – user334639 Oct 08 '17 at 23:42
A warning: after exporting to PDF back the content more often than not would look like slightly different than in the original document. Margins, offsets, alignment, all that (as always with OOO/Libreoffice) – zerkms Sep 24 '20 at 00:22
I tried that now. The important piece of information is that it LibreOffice Draw that will handle the document. It looks a lot more usable and the page and formatting appear to be proper contrary to my earlier attempts going back as far as 2010. For a document workflow where you should just be able to fill out a form and sign something it might not be an appropriate choice. But the official government I currently have here also makes it not easy for a recipient. – LiveWireBT Feb 17 '23 at 08:34
I'd say for most of the problems you encounter it's not Linux' or FOSS' fault. It's just that the document authors are not aware or don't care. Which brings me back to my unpopular solution below: (Pretend to) Print the document and draw on it. It's retarded and I apologize, but (digitally) disrespectful people force me to make things not more complicated than necessary. Other people might say time is money. – LiveWireBT Feb 17 '23 at 08:45

score 7 · Answer 8 · edited Feb 27 '13 at 13:01

7

Abobe Reader for Linux, not open source but it handles this kind of stuff.

edited Feb 27 '13 at 13:01

BuZZ-dEE

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answered Mar 06 '11 at 16:39

c0de

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Adobe has discontinued support for Linux. This link here seems to have information about how to install the Linux version: http://ubuntuhandbook.org/index.php/2014/04/install-adobe-reader-ubuntu-1404/ – EboMike Nov 03 '14 at 07:13
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https://askubuntu.com/questions/767937/how-to-install-adobe-acrobat-in-ubuntu-16-04 also has installation instructions (for 16.04, worked for 14.04). – reducing activity Apr 26 '17 at 10:26
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Can run in docker container without polluting local system with old cruft using https://github.com/chrisdaish/docker-acroread – Mike S Oct 12 '17 at 16:36

score 5 · Answer 9 · edited Mar 13 '17 at 02:52

5

Since (at least) Ubuntu 14.04 Evince is able to fill the PDF with forms.

Then, if you want to save the PDF in a way that the form cannot be modified anymore, for example because you need to send the PDF to someone, you can just print to file the document.

edited Mar 13 '17 at 02:52

d4nyll

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answered Nov 28 '14 at 20:17

Zanna

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Not all of them, XFA forms are unsupported (present in tax report form in Poland) and unlike Okular there is not even an error message. – reducing activity Apr 26 '17 at 09:41
And what if you want to save it in a way hat can still be filled? – user334639 Oct 08 '17 at 23:40
@d4nyll How can I fill forms with Evince? There is option to add notes, but it is a different thing. – reducing activity May 11 '22 at 15:40
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@reducingactivity They say that now Firefox supports editing "XFA forms" https://askubuntu.com/a/1186460/19753 – imz -- Ivan Zakharyaschev Mar 21 '23 at 11:36

score 4 · Answer 10 · answered Nov 08 '18 at 15:37

4

Libreoffice Draw is the best open-source pdf filling & signing application I have found on Linux.

However for annotations (highlights, underlines, boxes & adding notes), then Okular is the best.

answered Nov 08 '18 at 15:37

LibreOffice Draw is working great for me on Ubuntu 18.04. – Garrett Nov 26 '19 at 00:40
Draw is good other than its long-standing bug of broken formatting as a result of not supported embedded fonts: https://bugs.documentfoundation.org/show_bug.cgi?id=82163. Okular is great aside from the size an exported PDF becomes. – curiouser Feb 22 '22 at 20:28
libreoffice draw is also my solution for filling in pdfs that have check boxes, etc. – bit Sep 11 '22 at 09:12

Peter V. Mørch · Answer 11 · 2023-03-23T08:39:12.020

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In firefox 91.7.0esr (64-bit) I am able to edit PDF fields e.g. in this form. If I then hit the download button, I download a PDF file with the fields edited. The fields remain editable so I can repeat the process and perform further edits. Edit: This is now also possible in Chrome. Voila!

edited Mar 23 '23 at 08:39

answered May 02 '22 at 10:06

Peter V. Mørch

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Firefox is even a good solution for editing "XFA forms", which cannot be edited by many other software, as it seems: https://askubuntu.com/a/1186460/19753 – imz -- Ivan Zakharyaschev Mar 21 '23 at 11:34

score 3 · Answer 12 · answered Jun 04 '20 at 21:57

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It's not exactly the "Ubuntu specific" answer, but I did away with using Google Drive and https://dochub.com/. I just clicked on "Open with" dropdown in my Google Drive and selected DocHub there.

answered Jun 04 '20 at 21:57

JLarky

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score 3 · Answer 13 · answered Sep 12 '16 at 20:19

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FoxitReader Linux version works also for adding text
(anywhere , not good as a real form field editor , but can be useful too) :

After downloading, extracting and running install script, open your pdf. You can write using "typewriter" in "comment" menu.

Saving works .

answered Sep 12 '16 at 20:19

laugeo

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Good to know that there is a Linux version, but it's not on Flathub and it's not on Snapcraft either (I don't care about snaps anyway, it's just an unnecessary harm done to the FOSS community) so it's virtually not existent anymore these days. Yes you could go to https://www.foxit.com/downloads/#Foxit-Reader/ but we as a community agreed to use repositories instead of hunting software on sketchy sites on the internet and have every computer owner be burdened to keep the zoo of software updated. It made so much sense that even Microsoft adopted it only ~25 later to create winget. – LiveWireBT Feb 17 '23 at 08:21

Paulo Coghi · Answer 14 · 2020-03-24T14:59:53.643

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Atril (that is a fork of Evince) comes by default on Mate Desktop (Ubuntu Mate, Linux Mint Mate, etc) and has full support to fill forms on PDF's, including checkboxes.

https://github.com/mate-desktop/atril

edited Mar 24 '20 at 14:59

answered Mar 24 '20 at 14:44

Paulo Coghi

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Are you sure? I see no option to achieve this and https://github.com/mate-desktop/atril#atril is not even mentioning such capability – reducing activity May 11 '22 at 15:45
I am 100% sure, because I use it a lot to fill forms inside PDFs. The only requisite is the form fields themselves inside the desired PDF. – Paulo Coghi May 12 '22 at 09:19

score 1 · Answer 15 · answered Aug 09 '12 at 17:35

1

With PDF Studio you can fill interactive PDF forms (including XFA) or you can use the typewriter tool to add text onto flat forms, then flatten into the document or save as a PDF comment.

PDF Studio 7 was in the top 10 downloads on the Ubuntu Canonical Software Center.

answered Aug 09 '12 at 17:35

Sunny

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7 is gone, but here's the new URL: https://apps.ubuntu.com/cat/applications/pdf-studio-8-demo/ – Hinz Sep 14 '15 at 06:56
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This is proprietary software, writing a disrupting watermark on each page when used in Demo mode. – guntbert Jun 23 '16 at 17:17
@Hinz Your link is now dead. – reducing activity Apr 26 '17 at 09:43
@Mateusz Konieczny: Happens to all of us, sooner or later. There's PDF Studio 11 at qoppa.com. But it seems it's payware only and thus not in the Ubuntu repos anymore. – Hinz Apr 26 '17 at 10:54

LiveWireBT · Answer 16 · 2023-02-19T04:14:19.817

Update 2023: It turns out Firefox can handle such documents well when they are properly formatted. I was able to clearly see which fields and checkboxes can be filled and I was able to save the document with my modifications. It's just the amount of garbage documents and other users reliance on a proprietary application (with a deprecated and unsafe feature set) which make me occasionally doubt in which time we live in.

It's a solved problem. When you arrived here, take a deep breath. Stop searching, "print" the document, fill it out and move on.

I use GIMP whenever I need to change something in PDF a document.

I know very well that PDF documents with forms – and a whole lot more awkward security holes – can be created and that some people actually use this, but I prefer that people do not send me such documents. That's why I use GIMP.

It's also not very different from printing the document and scanning it as a PDF (or TIFF and faxing it). I don't understand why people actually do "scan to PDF" without involving OCR or some kind of re-vectorization, but this misunderstanding of the format works in my favor.

Note that XFA forms are unsupported (present in tax report form in Poland) and unlike Okular there is not even an error message — reducing activity, Apr 26 '17 at 09:50

score 0 · Answer 17 · answered Jul 05 '21 at 09:41

0

I was able to get it done using INKSCAPE. Hope this helps!

answered Jul 05 '21 at 09:41

alien250

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score 0 · Answer 18 · answered Sep 02 '22 at 23:33

Just use the Adobe Acrobat PDF Reader Windows Version (there is none for Linux anymore) via Wine. On Ubuntu 20.04, there's a snap for it and it just works:

sudo snap install acrordrdc
acrordrdc # note: on first startup, this might take 10 minutes to set up wine

I have to fill out a monthly report that is a form with a special table where you can even enter times and it calculates stuff and there is a button to fill in the current date. I have not found any other program that supports these (IMO absolute overkill) PDF form features...

Also, please convince your HR department to stop using PDF forms.

Source: https://linuxconfig.org/how-to-install-adobe-acrobat-reader-dc-wine-on-ubuntu-20-04-focal-fossa-linux

score 0 · Answer 19 · answered Jun 27 '23 at 01:49

NightPDF is able to open both PDF and PDF forms/fields, and save the filled form. Plus, it supports automated fields calculations.

https://flathub.org/apps/io.github.lunarequest.NightPDF

https://github.com/Lunarequest/NightPDF

Full free Libre Software (Open Source) GPL2

score 0 · Answer 20 · edited Jul 18 '17 at 04:11

MasterPDFeditor is now problematic for Ubuntu 17.04. crashes regularly.
Using Libreoffice, LO is changed too for release 5.2. The pdf must be imported into GIMP, then saved as a bmp file. In LO, use menu: format/ page/ bitmap. Choose your bmp file and import to current LO page. To enter text, click the textbox icon in the menu. This will overlay the text onto the bmp image. Save and export to new pdf file. Repeat process if you need different forms for different pages. Join all pdf files with pdfshuffler.

Is there software that can fill PDF forms?

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