Turn the fields of a fillable PDF into plain page content so the form looks the same everywhere and can't be edited. Runs on your device.
To flatten a PDF form, add the filled PDF and press Flatten PDF: the tool draws every form field onto the page itself and removes the live field, so the file shows the same thing in every viewer and printer. A fillable PDF stores a field as a separate object on top of the page, with a name, a value and a small picture of how it looks. Some viewers redraw that picture, some ignore it, and anyone can type over it. After flattening, the picture is part of the page and the field is gone. Say a form has 12 fields. The page tells you that before you start, and the result row reports 12 form fields flattened. The saved file is named after yours with -flattened added, for example invoice-flattened.pdf. Your original is never changed, and the file stays in this tab. The tool keeps each field's stored appearance, the picture the file's author or your PDF app saved. If the form asks for its appearances to be rebuilt (a flag called NeedAppearances), or a field has none, they are first redrawn from the field values in a standard font. Fill the form first, for example in Fill PDF Form: an empty field is flattened as an empty box.
This tool flattens form fields only: text boxes, tick boxes, radio buttons, drop-down menus, lists and buttons. Everything else on the page is kept exactly as it was. Comments, highlights, stamps, sticky notes, links and file attachments are not form fields, so they are not changed, and a comment keeps its text. Fields that are hidden in the form are removed without being printed, and the file keeps no copy of their values. A PDF with no form fields gets a notice that there is nothing to flatten, not an error, and no new file is made.
Flattening rewrites the file, so it breaks a digital signature. A signed PDF is a file whose signature covers its exact bytes; change one byte and a viewer reports the signature as invalid. The page warns you when it finds a signed field. Keep the signed original if you may need to prove it later. A signature field that was never signed and shows nothing is removed. One that shows a stored appearance, such as a Sign here box, is flattened into the page like any other field. A password-protected PDF is refused with a clear message, because the tool cannot read it: remove the password first, then flatten. A form that asks for its appearances to be rebuilt can only be flattened if its values use Latin letters, digits and common punctuation, which is what the standard font draws (the Windows-1252 set). A value in Cyrillic, Greek, Japanese or another script is refused with a message and nothing is flattened. The workaround is to fill the form and save it in a PDF app first, so the stored appearance is right, then flatten that file. XFA forms, an older Adobe format that draws the form from XML instead of from the page, cannot be flattened here. If a file carries both an ordinary form and XFA data, the XFA part is removed on save so every viewer shows the flattened page.
Flattening does not make a PDF smaller, and it does not turn scanned pages into text. It does not hide or remove content that is already part of the page, so it is not a way to redact: for black boxes that really remove text, use Redact PDF. It also cannot be undone in the saved file, because the field values are no longer stored as fields. Very large files are limited by the memory of your device: the page asks before it reads a PDF over the device limit or with more than 1,000 pages, and a job that runs longer than 2 minutes is stopped with a message instead of freezing the tab. All of the work happens in a background worker in your browser, so the PDF is not uploaded.
Add the PDF and press Flatten PDF, then download the result. A form with 8 fields comes back as a normal page that shows the stored look of each field, with no fields left to click. Fill the form and save it first, for example in Fill PDF Form, because empty fields are flattened as empty.
Some forms ask viewers to redraw their fields (NeedAppearances), and this tool redraws in a standard font that covers about 220 Latin characters. A value in Cyrillic, Greek or Japanese cannot be drawn with it, so nothing is flattened. Fill the form and save it in a PDF app first, then add that file here: its stored appearance is kept as it is.
It stops being valid. A signature covers the exact bytes of the signed file, and flattening writes a new file. The page warns you before you save. Keep the signed original, and flatten a copy only when the signature no longer matters.
No. This tool flattens form fields only. A PDF with 4 highlights, a stamp and a form keeps all 5 of those exactly as they were, and only the form fields are printed onto the page. A comment also keeps its text.
The PDF has no form fields, so it is already flat as far as forms go. Scanned PDFs and PDFs saved from a word processor are usually in that state. Nothing is changed and no file is made.
No. The PDF is read and rewritten by code running in a background worker in this tab. The page counts visits with Google Analytics, using rough groups such as 1 to 10 MB, never the file, its name, or the text in your fields.