How to Fill in PDF Forms on Website?

Sometimes you may need users to fill in PDF forms on your website. It can be tricky to do this because PDF is not a web-native format. Browsers can display PDFs, but editing or filling them in is not a native browser capability. To make it worse, if you’re trying to collect form data, it’s hard to do this directly from a PDF. You may need to either write extra scripts, or use special PDF SDKs to manage it. You can learn more about PDF forms in this article.

Therefore, a better solution is to directly convert the PDF forms to HTML forms, then let users fill them in. HTML forms are designed specifically for web use and every browser supports them without needing extra tools. Data collection is made so much easier since HTML forms can also send data directly to your server or backend. You can read more about HTML forms here.

We have developed a tool called FormVu to help companies achieve success in letting users fill in PDF forms on the website. FormVu is the best tool for filling PDF forms in HTML. In this article, I will guide you through how to use FormVu to allow your users fill in PDF forms on the website.

Step 1. Convert PDF Forms to HTML Forms

There are different ways to use FormVu. You can use our cloud API, run FormVu with command line, or add it as a dependency to run in Java. I will be using the command line here as an example.

1. Ensure you have Java installed on your machine
2. Download the FormVu trial jar
3. Set the trial jar address, input directory and output directory
4. Run the command!

java -Xmx512M -jar formvu-trial.jar /inputDirectory/ /outputDirectory/

When running from the command line, settings are controlled by passing in system properties. You can learn more about it in this support document.

Step 2. Fill in the Form

Imbed the form.html file in your website.

When your users open this html, they should be able to fill in the form just as how they do it with the original PDF form.

Step 3. Submit

The converted file comes with a built-in viewer. At the top left, click on “submit form” button. Your users can then fill in a link to submit this form to you.

An example of gathered data:

FormVu is used by big companies such as Jack Henry & Associates Inc, Edward Jones, and more. It allows developers to enhance data submission and process filled PDF forms. The converted HTML forms are also much easier to integrate into web apps. Get the trial jar and try it out!

FormVu allows you to