Fill Out a PDF
Most of the forms a contractor is handed are flat: a permit application scanned to PDF, a supplier credit sheet, a lien waiver a general contractor emailed over. There is nothing to click and nothing to type into. Open it here, click where the answer goes, and type.
How it works
- Choose the PDF. It is read from your device, not uploaded.
- Click anywhere on the page and type. Add a check mark, today's date, or a signature the same way.
- Drag anything into place, adjust the text size, then download the filled copy.
What you get
- Type anywhere on any page, no form fields needed
- Check marks for the boxes on a scanned form
- Today's date in one click
- A drawn or typed signature, for the line at the bottom
- Text size control, for the forms with small boxes
- The original pages left exactly as they were
Flat forms are the normal case
A PDF with real form fields, the kind where boxes light up blue when you open it, is the exception in this trade. What actually arrives is a scan. Somebody printed a form, filled part of it in, scanned it and emailed the result, and every field on it is now a picture of a field.
The usual answers are all bad. Printing it, writing on it and scanning it back needs a printer and a scanner. Retyping it into Word loses the form. Uploading it to a converter site puts a customer's paperwork on someone else's server. Typing on top of it in your browser is the short path.
The forms this gets used for
Permit and inspection applications from a city building department. Supplier credit applications and tax exemption certificates. W-9 requests from a general contractor who wants it back today. A lien waiver sent over in the GC's own format, which you have to sign rather than replace. Insurance certificates, subcontractor onboarding packets, and the pile of one off forms that every commercial job produces.
For the documents you control rather than receive, do not fill a PDF at all. Take the blank template instead and fill it in on the page, which gives you a clean typed document rather than typing over a scan.
Lining text up with a scanned box
Getting text to sit inside a printed box is the whole difficulty with a flat form. Two things make it easy. Click roughly where the answer goes and then drag the text into position, watching the page rather than guessing coordinates. Then set the text size to match the form, because a box on a scanned application is usually smaller than the default nine points of a typed line.
If a form is dense, zoom the page in your browser first. The placement is stored against the page itself, not against what is on your screen, so zooming changes nothing about where the text lands in the finished file.
Nothing leaves your device
A permit application carries your license number. A credit application carries your tax ID and your bank. A W-9 carries an EIN or a social security number. Those are exactly the documents that should never be uploaded to a free conversion site, and here they are not. Your browser opens the file, writes on it and saves it, and no part of that touches a server.
Questions people ask
Is the PDF uploaded?
No. It is opened and edited by your browser. Nothing is sent anywhere and nothing is kept.
What if the PDF already has form fields?
You can still type on top of it here, and the result prints and reads correctly. If the fields do work in your PDF reader, filling them there is tidier.
Can I fill a scanned form?
Yes, and that is the main case. A scan is just a picture of a page, and text placed on top of it prints exactly as if it had been typed into the box.
Does the text stay editable after I download?
No. It is drawn into the page, so the downloaded file is final. Keep the original if you expect to need a second version.
Can I use it on a phone?
Yes. Placing small text on a dense form is easier on a laptop, but everything works on a phone, including the signature.
What about a password protected PDF?
A PDF that requires a password to open will not load. Remove the password first, then fill the copy.