Functionality to Enable / Add form fields

[tjsuominen]

To my surprice I did not find anything related to forms functionality?

I would like to be able to add / convert a pdf generated from Word 365 as fillable form.

[dosubot[bot]]

Hi @tjsuominen! I'm Dosu and I’m helping the Stirling-PDF team.

Good news! Stirling-PDF actually has form functionality available. Here's what's currently supported:

Existing Form Features:

• Form Filling: You can fill existing PDF forms either through the Normal Viewer Mode (client-side) or a dedicated Form Fill Tool (server-side)
• Form Operations: Fill, extract, modify, and delete form fields including text fields, checkboxes, radio buttons, combo boxes, and more (PR #4830)
• Data Export: Export form data to CSV and XLSX formats (PR #5776)
• WeasyPrint Integration: Convert HTML forms into interactive PDF forms using the --pdf-forms parameter (#3077)

Regarding your specific use case (converting a Word-generated PDF into a fillable form): This would require adding new form fields to an existing PDF. There's some backend work on form identification/creation, but there's a known issue where newly created form fields have 0x0 size, which causes rendering problems. So while filling existing forms works well, creating new form fields from scratch is still a work in progress.

You might want to watch #4702 for updates on form creation capabilities.

To reply, just mention @dosu.

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[tjsuominen]

@dosu So, what is your recommendation when working with MS Word documents:

• leave the fields 'empty' (no special markup) and export as PDF or
• add _ (underscore) to the form fields and then export as PDF
• something else, what?

And then, open in Stirling PDF to add fillable form fields, check boxes etc.

So what is the recommended work flow?

Appreciated and thx for the initial response.

[dosubot[bot]]

To be transparent: adding form fields to an existing PDF (from Word or otherwise) in Stirling-PDF isn't fully reliable yet. As @balazs-szucs mentioned, this is actively being worked on, but there's a known issue where newly created form fields have 0x0 size, which causes rendering problems.

Given the current state, my honest recommendation:

If you need fillable forms now, the most reliable workflow within Stirling-PDF is actually HTML → PDF using WeasyPrint, which generates fillable PDF forms by default. This means designing your form in HTML with standard form elements (<input>, <select>, <textarea>) and converting it.

For your Word-based workflow, there isn't specific guidance in the docs. The underscores vs. empty fields question won't matter much if you're planning to add form fields on top, but since that functionality has bugs currently, I'd suggest either:

1. Wait for the form creation features to mature (watch the repo for updates)
2. Switch to HTML as your source format if you need this urgently
3. Use an external tool like LibreOffice or Adobe to add form fields, then use Stirling-PDF for filling/extracting data from those forms (which works well)

Sorry I can't give you a cleaner Word → Stirling-PDF workflow—the tooling just isn't there yet.

To reply, just mention @dosu.

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[balazs-szucs]

Hi,

Generally, form-related tasks are tedious and involve a lot of UI fluff, which is why they take longer than expected. It is currently being worked on, but there is no official ETA. Right now, my main priority is getting viewer-side form rendering in order (which uses WASM compiled PDFium). I am also occupied with a longer-term project for SPDF, porting a some the of the codebase to native C++ to handle heavier tasks rather than relying on Java.