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pupeno
Asked: 2011-03-07 02:11:25 +0800 CST

Is there software that can fill PDF forms?

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

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19 Answers

  1. 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++.

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  2. 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

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  3. 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.

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  4. 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.

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  5. 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

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  6. 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.

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  7. 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]:

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

    Done.

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

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  9. 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.

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  10. 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.

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