Flatten a PDF
A filled form is not a finished document. Until it is flattened the answers are values sitting beside the page, and anyone who opens the file can put different ones in the same boxes. This paints them onto the page and takes the boxes away.
How it works
- Choose the PDF. It counts the fields it found and names them, before anything is changed.
- Flatten. Each answer is painted onto the page at the spot it was showing and the field behind it is removed.
- Download. What you send reads and prints exactly the same and can be retyped by nobody.
What you get
- Text boxes, tick boxes, radio buttons, dropdowns and list fields, all of them
- A count of what was found before you commit and a count of what was locked after
- One field it cannot lock does not cost you the other thirty
- An unsigned signature line is left open, so a locked waiver is still signable
- The words stay words, so the document still searches and still copies
- A folder of them at once, back as one zip
- No upload, no watermark, no account
What a filled in field actually is
When you type into a PDF form, the words are not put on the page. They are stored as the value of a field, and the page carries a box that displays whatever that value currently is. Your reader shows you the finished document; the file underneath is still a blank form with a note attached saying what to display.
That is why a filled form is safe to send only once it is flattened. Before that, the person who receives it can open it in any free reader, click the amount on a lien waiver or the scope on a change order, type something else and save. Nothing in the file records that it happened, and the version they print looks exactly as official as the one you sent.
The signature line is the exception, on purpose
A signature field that nobody has signed yet has nothing to paint, because there is no appearance to copy onto the page. Most flatteners hit that field and give up on the whole document. This one locks everything else and leaves that line alone, which is what you want: a waiver goes out with the figures fixed and the signature line still live, because being signed is the reason it is going out at all.
If the PDF carries a real digital signature, one applied with a certificate rather than drawn on, do not flatten it. Rewriting the file breaks the cryptography that makes the signature mean anything, here or in any other tool. Send that document exactly as it arrived.
One field it cannot lock should not cost you the document
The usual way this is built is one call that either flattens every field or throws and returns nothing. That is fine until a form arrives with a field some other program wrote without an appearance, which is common enough that it is worth designing around. Then a contractor gets an error on a document that was perfectly fixable and no explanation of which field caused it.
Here every field is done on its own. What could be locked is locked, what could not is named on screen and left working, and you get the file either way. If the only thing left is the signature line, that is not a failure, it is the document you wanted.
It is still text, and nothing is uploaded
Flattening is not the same as turning the page into a picture. The answers are drawn as text, so the finished document still searches, still copies and still weighs about what it did before. That matters to whoever files it: a permit office that runs text extraction on what you send will still find your job address.
The reading and the writing both happen in your browser on your own device. There is no server on this site that receives a document. If you want to fill the form in the first place, fill out a PDF writes flat from the start, so a form filled here needs no flattening at all.
Questions people ask
Can it be undone?
Not from the downloaded file, which is the whole point of it. Your original is untouched on your device, so if you flattened the wrong version, open the original again.
I filled the form on this site. Do I still need this?
No. Fill out a PDF writes your words onto the page as it goes, so what it hands back is already flat. This is for a form you filled somewhere else, or one a general contractor filled and sent to you.
Will it look any different?
No. What gets painted onto the page is the same appearance your reader was already showing, at the same position and in the same font, so a flattened form prints identically to the one on your screen.
Does the text stay selectable?
Yes. The words are drawn as text, not as a picture of text, so the document still searches and copies. Printing to PDF or scanning a printout is what loses that.
It says a field could not be locked. What now?
The field is named on screen and is still working, and the rest of the document is locked. Nearly always it is an unsigned signature line, which is meant to stay open. If it is something else, open the form in your reader, retype that one answer, save, and run it through again.
Can I do a whole folder?
Yes. Drop up to twenty at once and they come back as one zip with the same names inside, which is the shape a month of signed waivers is already in.
What about a password protected PDF?
It will not open. Save an unprotected copy from your PDF reader first, then flatten that.