Flatten PDF forms
Flatten a filled PDF form: the answers in text fields, check boxes, radio buttons and drop-down lists become part of the page, and the fields are removed so nobody can change them. Up to 10 PDFs at once. It all runs in your browser, so your files are never uploaded.
How to flatten a PDF
Flatten a PDF form without uploading it
A filled PDF form still has live fields. Anyone who opens it can click into a box and change a name, an amount or a date, some apps lose the answers when the file is opened again, and a form printed from a phone sometimes comes out with empty boxes. Flattening fixes all of that: the answers become part of the page, like text that was printed there, and the fields are removed.
Tax forms, applications, contracts and medical questionnaires are full of personal details, so this tool flattens them in your browser. The PDF is read from your device, flattened on your device and saved back to it. Nothing is uploaded, and there is no account to create.
Flatten PDF form fields
Drop up to 10 PDFs at a time, each up to 60 MB and 200 MB together, and flattening starts at once. Every text field, check box, radio button, drop-down list and list box is drawn onto its page at the same place and with the same look it had in the form, and then removed from the file. A ticked box stays ticked and the chosen item of a drop-down stays shown.
Some forms are saved with a note that the look of their fields is out of date, which happens with forms filled in by some apps. In that case the text and choice fields are redrawn from their values before flattening, in a sans-serif font that covers Latin, Greek and Cyrillic letters, so what you typed is what ends up on the page.
Download the flattened PDF
Each flattened file is named after the original with -flattened added, so application.pdf becomes application-flattened.pdf, and the number of fields flattened is shown next to it. One file downloads straight away; several files each get a download button, and Download all puts them in one ZIP called squishly-flattened.zip. Your original files are not changed, so you can still edit the form later.
If a PDF has no form fields, you see "This PDF has no form fields, so there is nothing to flatten." and no file is made for it. When you drop several files, the others are still flattened and the ones that were skipped are listed under the result. A PDF that needs a password to open has to have the password removed first.
What flattening does not change
Flattening only works on form fields. Comments, highlights, sticky notes and drawings added in a PDF reader are not form fields and are left as they are. The rest of the page is copied unchanged, and text that could be selected before still can be.
A flattened form is harder to change by accident, but it is not locked: a PDF editor can still change what is on the page, as with any PDF. A digital signature field is flattened like any other field, so flatten a form before it is digitally signed, not after. To label the result as a copy or add page numbers, watermark PDF and add page numbers to PDF work in your browser in the same way.