How to fill out a PDF form without printing it

"Print, fill out by hand, scan back in" is still the default workflow a lot of people reach for with a PDF form — mostly because it always works, regardless of what kind of PDF it is. It's also almost never necessary anymore, and skipping it depends on knowing which of two very different kinds of form you're actually holding.

Real form fields vs. a flat page that looks like a form

Some PDFs have actual interactive form fields built in — an AcroForm, in PDF terms — with real text boxes, checkboxes, and dropdowns you can click into. Others are just a scanned or exported image of a form: it looks fillable, but there's nothing to click, because it's a picture, not a form.

Handling each one

1. If the PDF has real form fields, Fill PDF Form reads them directly — their type, their position, their current value — and lets you type into text fields, tick checkboxes, and pick from dropdowns using the form's own structure, not a guess at where text should go.
2. If it's a flat scanned form with no real fields, Add Text to PDF lets you place free-form text anywhere on the page by eye — the same result, achieved by drawing text at a position you choose rather than filling a structured field.

Making the result official

Once a form is filled, Fill PDF Form has a "flatten when done" option that bakes the values permanently into the page and removes the underlying fields — turning an editable form into a static, submission-ready document. If you're handed a PDF that someone else already filled out and just need to lock it down the same way, Flatten PDF does that directly without re-entering anything.