PDF tools · forms
The finishing step for a filled form: bake the answers into the pages, so the file prints and displays the same everywhere and nobody can change a field by accident. Everything runs in your browser; the document is never uploaded.
For a filled form whose answers must stay put when the file is printed, emailed, or opened somewhere else.
Pick the filled form
Flatten the PDF
Check and download
Drop a PDF on the tray, or click to pick one
PDF · it stays on this device
Form fields (text boxes, checkboxes, dropdowns, radio buttons) are baked into the pages. Other annotations are counted on the spec and reported on the result line; this page does not hide them and does not remove them. Keep your editable original: flattening is a one-way door for the fields.
One warning before you run it: if the form has a signature field, flattening bakes in whatever that field shows right now. If it is empty or wrong, fix the form first, then flatten. Afterwards, open the finished file and check it before you file it.
Pick a PDF to begin.
The page opens the form, refreshes each field's appearance from its value, and then merges the fields into the page content with the PDF engine's own form tools. The output is opened again and counted, so the result line reports the finished file's numbers (fields left: zero), not the plan.
Flattening is final for the fields: the answers become ink, not data, so a flattened form cannot be re-filled or machine-read as a form afterwards. Annotations that are not form fields are reported, not flattened, per the note on the ticket. A signature field flattens to whatever its appearance shows; check the finished file before you file it.
A password-protected PDF cannot be opened by this tool. Take its password off first with the unlock tool, then bring the file back.
A filled form keeps its answers in editable fields, which some printers, portals and older readers display wrongly or not at all. Flattening bakes the answers into the pages themselves, so the file shows the same thing everywhere and the answers can no longer be edited by accident.
They are annotations, not form fields, and this engine cannot bake them into the page. The page counts them and the result line reports them, in the open, rather than dropping them silently. They remain annotations in the finished file.
The page finds none, says so before you run, and if you run it anyway your file comes back re-saved with the result line stating that nothing was flattened. Nothing is dressed up.
Nowhere. It is read into this page and flattened in your browser. Watch the network panel while it works if you want to check.