Fill in forms and edit PDFs

You can use Preview to fill in, annotate and even password protect PDFs

-  David Crookes

IT WILL TAKE
> 20 minutes

YOU WILL LEARN
> How to edit, annotate, sign, protect and share your PDFs

YOU'LL NEED
> Preview app on Mac (iPhone/iPad/Apple Pencil optional)

Tricky things PDFs! So what can you do with them on a Mac? Well, quite a lot actually, with Preview alone letting you fill in forms, add signatures, make comments, use passwords, and more.

Opt for some other PDF editors and you can go further. PDF Expert (£72.99/year, pdfexpert.com), for instance, lets you change text and add links, and enables you to convert PDFs to Word, Excel and PowerPoint docs. Foxit's PDF Editor (£111.16/year, foxit.com) adds nifty share and collaborative options. With some deep diving, however, you'll soon discover how versatile Preview and macOS can be.

For starters, you can create a PDF from docs and web pages by trying File > ‘Export as PDF’, or by selecting Print in an app and choosing ‘Save as PDF’ in the bottom left corner. In Preview, you can also select File > ‘Import from Phone’ and use an iPhone to take photos or scan documents to help build a PDF. With a PDF to work with, you can then dive deeper.

HOW TO DO more with your PDFs

1 Fill in a PDF

The Preview app is more than an image and PDF viewer. It's an editing tool you can use to directly fill in forms - there's no need to print, just complete on screen and scan! It's generally as simple as clicking a field and typing text.