Add text to a PDF

How to use it#

1. Drop a PDF onto the box above, or click it to choose one.
2. Go to the page and press Add text, or double tap where the words should go, then type them in the text box under the page.
3. Drag the text into position, or take a corner to make it bigger or smaller. Size and Colour change the selected box, and Ctrl+C then Ctrl+V copies it, to this page or another.
4. Download the PDF. Backspace removes the selected box, Clear removes every box, and Undo takes back the last change.

Filling in a PDF that is not fillable#

Plenty of forms arrive as a PDF with lines to write on and nothing to click: a scanned application, a lease exported from a word processor, a school permission slip. A form like that is called non-fillable, because it has no fields to type into. Printing it, writing on it, and scanning it back works, but it is slow and the result is hard to read. Typing onto the page gets the same answers onto it in a minute, and they are sharp at any zoom.

Press Add text for each answer, type it, and drag it onto its line. A box keeps its own size and colour, so a name can be larger than the small print beside it. If the form does have boxes you can click into, fill in the PDF form instead: the answers then go into the form itself, where software that reads forms can find them.

What the text becomes in the file#

Each box is written into the page as real text in Helvetica, a font every PDF reader has built in, so nothing is embedded and the file grows by a few hundred bytes. The words can be selected, copied, and searched like any other text, and they print at full sharpness.

The text sits on top of the page. Nothing underneath is changed or removed, so this is not a way to edit words already in the document, and a box placed over existing text overlaps it rather than replacing it. To hide something for good, use the redaction tool, which takes the covered text out of the file.

Getting it to line up#

The preview is the page at its real proportions, and the text on it is laid out with the same letter widths and line spacing that go into the file, so a line that sits on the rule on screen sits on it in the download. For form answers, 10 or 12 points matches most printed forms. The size runs from 6 points for small print to 72 for a heading; the slider and the corners both change it, and the corners keep the box anchored at the opposite side. Each box can be black, blue, or red: blue for a form that asks for blue ink, and red for a correction or a note to the reader.

Each line break you type starts a new line in the box, which is how to fill an address or a paragraph. A box that is empty when you download is simply left out.