The form

Drop the PDF here, or

What to do to it

Remove comments, highlights and sticky notes. These are not part of the page either, and each one carries whoever wrote it and when. Keep links. A link is an annotation too, but removing them turns a document's own cross-references into dead text. Clear the document properties. Title, author, subject, keywords, the name of whatever produced the file, and the second copy of all of it that sits in the embedded metadata packet.

Fields, left-over answers and document code are always removed.

How it works

A PDF form stays a form after you fill it in: anyone can change your answers, and the values can be read without opening the file properly. FLATTEN draws each answer onto the page for good and removes the fields, so what you send is what the other side sees. It is the step to take before you send a completed form.

Doing this often? PDF Studio flattens forms and comments across a whole folder, as one step of a saved batch. On its own, US$4 a month; with everything else, US$9 a month or US$79 a year. 7 days free.

A filled-in form is not a statement yet FLATTEN

The form

What is in it now

What to do to it

The result