One design that always annoys me is banks, insurers, super providers etc. that give you forms to āPrint and Complete.ā Most of us these days have the ability to just complete it digitally. PDFs can be turned into fillable forms you can type into. And if signatures or drawings are required, a lot of us have tablets. For those who donāt they can still be printed.
Wouldnāt digital forms make paperwork much easier? (And save some paper in the process)
Most organizations I have dealt with recently use editable PDFs with the fields to be filled in highlighted. For signature I have a scanned copy that is sized and pasted in.
No problems at all.
I find it extremely annoying when I have to print out, fill in, and then scan a PDF document instead of simply completing it online.
Even if a signature is required, it is still much more convenient to complete it online before printing, signing and scanning a document, especially with my hand writing.
There remain more than a handful of institutions that have not moved into the modern world in the mistaken goal of the security of the forms contents and wording. They have non-editable, non-fillable forms they for some reason think are secure.
When I have to use one I start with āprint to pdfā and voila, editable but not fillable, and my trusty pdf editor allows me to fill in and is smart enough to recognise boundaries, making it very easy. Insert a signature? Have some specimens in jpg? No worries.
@Almac, I just use the freely available and free Adobe Acrobat PDF viewer which allows you to annotate or insert text into open fields in PDF documents.
I donāt think I have ever encountered a PDF form, meant to be filled out, that basic Acrobat viewer had issues with.
In case you donāt know, Adobe is the originator of the PDF document format.
I first bought NitroPro around 2009 for work, when there were not many choices and just stuck with it. I upgraded every 2 years and currently use 10 but see no reason to upgrade again, so far.
There are also lots of reviews that donāt give Nitro a nod in 2021, and most reviews point to many lower cost and free ones.
In contrast to most home users I occasionally need to use a few of the more advanced features. I have yet to meet with a form I have not been able turn into a 100% digital experience.
Iāll take that further that I am aware of at least one form nothing but Adobe or a commercial quality editor can fill in! Most open it and display an advertisement for Adobe. It is from the US government, not to be ignored For those not āon boardā paper submissions are not accepted and the ātrickā to print to pdf and then edit over it is not recognised by the automated upload/filing system and gets rejected.
FWIW NitroPDF and some āproperā editors will fill it in but not edit it. Viewers mostly wonāt even display it and show
Iād like to use more fillable pdfs, but Iāve noticed that the font in the fillable fields in many of these forms is way too small. So I print, complete, scan and send.
Another consideration is that many SMEs who use these forms do not have IT staff, and even producing the basic form taxes their abilities to the max; never mind adding fillable, tickable, scrollable, or editable fields.