How to fill out and edit any PDF form in 5 easy steps….for FREE!
Filling out forms is central to everyday life in the internet age. A whole host of forms in PDF format are available on the web, ranging from job applications to business forms to official court filings. We use PDFs to directly collaborate with colleagues, government agencies and business associates. Unfortunately, many forms are not editable or savable. Frustratingly, incorrectly created fields within forms might not display information correctly. How many of us have screamed in frustration when there was no field to fill out comments in an “additional comments” section?
Despite the ubiquity of PDF forms, most people still lack the appropriate software to fill out forms primarily due to cost. A license for Adobe Acrobat 9 Pro can cost approximately $400 per person. FoxIt’s PDF editor costs $99 per person. These costs throw unneeded complexity into the software acquisition process, especially when IT budgets are strapped and “unnecessary” purchases are frowned upon. Even if you can purchase the software, bureaucratic hurdles often prevent the timely installation of software. Discovering that you can’t edit an important PDF an hour before a business deal must be closed is unacceptable in a business environment.
This sorry state of affairs has driven some to fall back on old versions of forms. They are often ugly and look nothing like current official forms, since they were either created by hand, OCR’ed or converted by cheap “PDF to DOC” converters. “PDF to DOC” and OCR technology simply do not have the accuracy or polish to be used in a professional production environment to create complex forms.
To the horror of professionals everywhere, businesses and individuals have resorted to using freeware PDF editors that leave a watermark on printed or saved forms. These watermarks look unprofessional and could possibility result in a filing that would be rejected because of an obscuring watermark. Not to mention the thorny liability issues that can arise when a business uses freeware products only intended for home or personal use.
Luckily, there is an easy way to edit most PDF files* for free by using two gems of the open source software community, The GIMP and Oracle’s OpenOffice.org Draw programs. Both products are entirely free to use and don’t have restrictive licensing, allowing headache free use in business environments. Individually, The GIMP is an amazing Adobe Photoshop substitute and OpenOffice.org is a fully featured Microsoft Office replacement. Combined, they are the secret tool to edit PDF files that Adobe doesn’t want you to know about.
The process to create and edit a PDF is relatively simple, but requires some old-fashioned footwork. Simply open the PDF file with The GIMP, type in the the form using the text tool, save each page of the form as a jpeg image file, collate the pictures by dragging and dropping each picture into Openoffice.org Draw, and then export the file back to PDF.
1) Open PDF file with The Gimp:
The first step is to open the PDF file using The Gimp. You can either launch the program first and open the form from the file menu, or by right clicking on the form using “open with” and selecting the application. The “Import from PDF” window appears. Select the page you want to edit by clicking the individual page. I don’t recommend importing more than one page at one time since problems can occur.
On the same window, make sure to change the dropdown field where it says “Import Pictures As…” to images, not layers. If you don’t, when you type, the words will be invisible. Then click the import button, and the page will open into a separate window.
2) Edit image files with the text tool:
Before starting to add text to the image files, make sure the image is zoomed into 100% by clicking in the lower left hand corner and selecting the correct zoom percentage.
Then in the toolbox window, click on the icon that says A. This is the text tool.
To use it, click where you want to type on the image. Once you click, you can type in the text editor box that pops up. If the text isn’t lined up properly, move your mouse to the center of the field until the cursor becomes a crosshatch and click and drag your text. You can also click and drag the text box before typing to make sure everything is centered.
You can easily change the font by selecting the font tool in the tool box by clicking on Aa and selecting the font you would like to use from the drop down menu, like Arial or Times New Roman. You can also change the size and color of the text.
3) Save as JPEG:
When you have finished adding text, go to File—>Save As. Choose the correct folder to save the image to and then click on “Select file by type” and choose JPEG. Remembering to save image file with a different name indicating the corresponding page number such as “form pg1”, “form pg2”, etc.” Click Save. Then when prompted, select Export.
Repeat steps 1 to 3 for each page of the PDF document you are editing.
4) Collate the pictures by Dragging and dropping each picture into Draw:
Open OpenOffice.org Draw. On the left hand column, right click below where it says Slide 1, and select new page. Make enough pages for each saved jpeg. Click on the page you want to fill on the left, and then drag and drop each jpeg from the saved folder into the appropriate page in the right page order. You might need to click and drag to center the picture within the borders.
5) Export to PDF:
Then select File—->Export As PDF and click Export, select the folder you want to save to, name the file, and click Save.
There you have it! You have a PDF file that is filled out and type written perfectly.
Now the completed PDF file can be printed and signed. One copy for your records, and another to be mailed. The signed forms can be rescanned for electronic submission. I don’t recommend the practice of keeping a signature image to drag and drop onto signature lines, but if you must, you can drag your signature image onto the form in the GIMP.
* Please note that you will NOT be able to edit password protected or encrypted PDFs using this method. Don’t give up hope though; if you have the password, you can still possibly edit the PDF. If you’ve lucked out and the form is mostly text, you can open the file using a pdf reader and copy and paste the text directly to a word processing document. Otherwise, you can print the PDF and rescan it as a JPEG, and follow the directions above from step 4. If the PDF is not printable, simply click your keyboard’s print screen key and paste the image into a new file in The Gimp. Use the rectangle select tool to surround the form, then click copy in the edit menu, then “paste into new”. Save the file as a JPG, and continue with Step 4.
