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3

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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7 Answers

up vote 11 down vote

PDFEdit (Click To Install)

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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4  
I don't like web sites that try to install things on my computer; so if anybody else was a bit freaked out, you can just install the "pdfedit" package. The web site you linked to is legit, it just spooked me a bit. :) – Windigo Mar 6 '11 at 18:27
3  
@Windigo If you are referring to the Click to install link then that is perfectly fine as it will just fire up your Software Center where you can then click on Install to install the package. – Octavian Damiean Mar 6 '11 at 19:54
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He was not asking for tool to edit PDF, but just to fill forms. – gsedej Mar 6 '11 at 19:55
Well you CAN full forms using this even the forms which are unfillable can be filled using this. – Alaukik Mar 7 '11 at 11:38
up vote 7 down vote

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

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up vote 5 down vote

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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up vote 4 down vote

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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up vote 2 down vote

With PDF Studio you can fill interactive PDF forms (including XFA) or you can use the typewriter tool to add text onto flat forms, then flatten into the document or save as a PDF comment.

PDF Studio 7 was in the top 10 downloads on the Ubuntu Canonical Software Center.

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up vote 2 down vote

Xournal will allow you to draw/write anything on top layer of any PDF document and then export it back to PDF.

Install via the software center

To install it from the terminal, use the following command:

sudo apt-get install xournal
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2  
But it loses the vector information of the original PDF, resulting in a lower-quality image. – Richard Dec 9 '12 at 21:39
Xournal does not actually fill forms. – RolandiXor♦ Feb 27 at 16:06
up vote 0 down vote

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: 1/ import the pdf file into GIMP, then export from GIMP into a tiff file. 2/ open LibreOffice Writer, and do; a/ set the margins to 0.1cm b/ use edit/page/background/watermark and choose the tiff file for your watermark

You will then have a page onto which you can overlay your typing onto the boxes that are now the watermark. By varying your fonts and sizes, you can get the text very close to where you want it.

Save as odt and pdf and you are done.

hope this was simple and helpful.

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Rob, In step 2, do you mean Format/Page/Background/Graphic then choose the tiff file? If that is the case, it does not seem to work. I use Open Office 3.2. Otherwise, I do not see Page under Edit. Neither do I see watermark in Open Office. I hope you tested what you suggest. If you did, please provide the details again. Much appreciated. – user148152 Apr 10 at 0:18

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