Drag a box where the answer goes, choose Text, Checkbox, Radio or Dropdown, set the font size and export a PDF with real form fields. No Acrobat needed.
Upload your form
Choose a PDF, a Word file or an image from your files, or photograph a paper form.
PDF, Word (.docx), JPG, PNG, WebP, HEIC, GIF and BMP. Free account required, no credit card.
Your first download is free, with no watermark. After that: a watermark, or a $7 one-time pack (25 clean PDF downloads + 25 AI credits). AI detection covers up to 15 pages per run.
By uploading, you confirm you have the legal right to use this document.
Build and preview fields free. Exporting clickable fields needs a one-time pack ($7) or a monthly plan.
Last checked against the vendors’ documentation on .
Yes. Acrobat’s Prepare a form tool needs a paid Pro or Standard plan, and the free Reader and Fill & Sign only place marks on top of the page. A browser tool can add the same kind of real checkbox, text field, radio button or dropdown, and the file it exports works in Acrobat Reader and every common viewer.
Drop in the file. Flat PDFs, scans, phone photos (JPG or PNG) and Word .docx files are accepted; a photo or a Word file is turned into a PDF first.
Field detection proposes a box on each blank line, checkbox and table cell it finds. Where it missed one, drag a rectangle on the page where the answer goes. Move or resize any box until it sits on the line or square.
Select the field and set its type in the toolbar: Text, Checkbox, Radio or Dropdown. To make a Yes / No pair where only one answer can be chosen, select both boxes and set them to Radio; they become one group.
Select a text field and type a size between 6 and 72 points in the toolbar. The exported field keeps that size, so long answers do not shrink to an unreadable default.
Give each field a short name such as client_name or agree_terms, then download the fillable PDF. The names travel with the file and label the answers when the form data is exported.
Text is for anything typed: names, dates, amounts, addresses.
Checkbox is an independent tick: each one can be on or off regardless of the others, which suits “tick all that apply” lists.
Radio is for one choice out of several, such as Yes / No or a payment method. All radio buttons in a group share one name, and ticking one clears the others.
Dropdown is a closed list of options. Use it when free text would produce answers you have to clean up afterwards, such as a state, a department or a plan name.
The free Acrobat Reader can fill fields that already exist, and its Fill & Sign tool lets you type text or place a mark anywhere on a page. Those are marks on top of the page, not form fields: the person you send the file to cannot click them on and off, and form software cannot read them as answers. Creating real fields in Acrobat needs the Prepare a form tool, which Adobe lists for paid Acrobat Pro and Standard plans.
A checkbox or text field is part of the PDF’s AcroForm, an open part of the PDF standard. Any tool that writes it correctly produces a file that works in Acrobat Reader, Chrome, Edge and phone PDF apps, which is what the steps above do in the browser.
For fields you add here, set the size before you export (step 4). Each text field keeps its own size, so a narrow date box can use a smaller size than a wide name field.
If the PDF already has fields that someone made in another tool, the size is a property of each existing field. Change it in the tool that created them; in Acrobat Pro that is the field’s Properties. The fields you add here sit next to existing ones and never replace them.
If you would rather not pay for the export, LibreOffice is free desktop software with form controls (text box, check box, option button, list box) that it can export as real PDF fields. It takes longer: you place each control by hand over the page, and on a scan you first insert the page as an image. The full guide compares it with the other methods.
Uploading the file, detecting fields, drawing and naming them and previewing the result is free. Downloading the PDF with clickable fields needs a one-time pack ($7, 25 clean downloads) or a monthly plan. The first clean copy of a form you filled yourself is free, but it is flattened, so it has no fields left. Anyone you send the fillable PDF to can type into it in Acrobat Reader, a browser or a phone app without a JustFill account.
Upload the file, see which fields are detected and decide afterwards.
Free account. No credit card required.