Fillable forms

Fillable forms let you send a document your contact completes on screen. They type into the fields, submit, and you get the finished document back. Nobody prints anything.

When to use one

Use a fillable form when you need specific information written into a specific document — an intake questionnaire, a standard disclosure, a court form your client has to complete in their own words. Use e-signatures instead when the document is already complete and just needs signing.

How it works

Start from the document you want completed.
Place fields where the contact needs to type — by hand, or with Detect Fields (see below). Drag a box's corner to size it, and select a field to change its settings.
Publish the form. Until you publish it, it stays a draft and nobody sees it.
Your contact opens it from their portal, fills it in, and submits.

Changing a form after it's sent

Once a published form has gone out to your contact, its fields are locked — you can open it to see how far they've got, but you can't move, add, or remove fields. (A request scheduled to send on a later date stays editable until it actually sends.)

To correct a sent form, open it and choose Unpublish to Edit. The form goes back to a draft and your contact can't open it until you publish it again. Their answers so far are kept for any field you leave in place. Make your changes, then Publish — your contact is told in their next update, which lists the form with everything else still outstanding. A form that has been sent can't be discarded, only republished.

If your contact had the form open while you were changing it, their screen asks them to reload the page before they carry on.

A form can have up to 500 fields. A form has a single filler — the contact — rather than multiple recipients. If you need several people to complete different parts, that is a signing workflow.

How the client completes it

Once an item's PDF is a fillable form, its editor shows How the Client Completes It:

Fill Out Online or Upload (the default) — the contact can fill it out in the portal, or download the blank form, complete it by hand, and upload a scan or photo.
Fill Out Online or Drop Off — the contact can fill it out in the portal, or download the blank form and bring or mail the paper copy to you. Uploads are turned off for that item. When the paper arrives, use Received Another Way on the item (see Reviewing and approving documents).
Fill Out Online Only — no download button and no uploads; the form can only be completed in the portal.

You can set it while composing the request or in a template, and change it later from Edit Checklist. Forms set up before September 27, 2026 were set to Fill Out Online Only, which is how they already worked; change any of them in Edit Checklist. "Online only" hides the download button, but the portal still has to show the contact the form in order to fill it in, so treat it as the intended route rather than a lock on the file.

Once the form is done any other way — marked Received Another Way, or a hand-completed upload you approved — the contact can no longer submit it online as well.

How your contact hears about it

A form doesn't send an email or text of its own. When the request goes out, your contact gets one email and one text listing everything you've asked for, with each form marked *fill out online*. A form added or published after the request has gone out is announced the same way: in one "new item" update that covers everything added in that sitting.

Saving progress

Your contact doesn't need to finish in one sitting. Every answer saves automatically as they type — the fill screen shows a small "Saved" note and a running count of required fields answered. If they close the tab, they can reopen the same portal link later and pick up where they left off; nothing is lost. This also means an attorney reopening a published form's field editor sees how much the contact has completed so far, not just whether it's been sent.

Detecting fields automatically

Detect Fields, at the top of the field panel, places fields for you:

If the PDF already has its own form — most IRS, court, bank, and insurance forms do — it uses those fields exactly: text boxes, multi-line boxes, checkboxes, dropdowns with their choices, and signature boxes. Radio buttons come in as separate checkboxes; delete the ones you don't need.
If it doesn't, it looks for blanks typed into the document: runs of underscores (________), empty checkboxes (☐ or [ ]), and several blank lines stacked together, which become one multi-line box. A blank labelled "Signature", "Initials", or "Date" — beside it or just underneath — becomes that type of field.

Whichever way it finds them, a date on a signature line — on the same row as a Signature or Initials field, or just under one — comes in as Date Signed, so it fills in with the day the contact signs. So does a blank labelled "Date Signed" or "Signature Date". Any other date, such as a date of birth, comes in as Date for the contact to enter. If a detected date is the wrong kind, delete it and place the other one.

Detected fields are only a starting point. They appear on the page for you to check, move, resize, or delete, and nothing is saved until you save or publish. Like fields you place by hand, they start out optional unless the PDF itself marks a field required, so turn on Required for any the contact must answer. Running it again never duplicates a field that's already placed.

It can't see blank lines that are drawn as graphics rather than typed, or anything on a scanned page — place those fields by hand.

When the contact submits, the PDF's own form fields are flattened into the page, so only their answers show — never an empty box sitting on top.

Field settings

Select a field to change its settings in the side panel:

Required — the contact can't submit until it's answered (for a checkbox, until it's checked). Every field starts out optional, whether you place it by hand or detect it, so turn this on for each one the contact must answer. Signature, Initials, and Date Signed fields are always required.
Multi-Line (text and label fields) — the contact can write several lines and press Enter for a new one; the text starts at the top of the box and wraps. Make the box tall enough for the lines you expect. Fields placed before this setting existed wrap automatically when the box is at least two lines tall.
Font and Size (text, label, date, and dropdown fields) — Times New Roman, Helvetica, or Courier, from 6 to 24 point. Fields you place start in Times New Roman 12 point. Detected fields keep the size the PDF's own form sets; otherwise they get 12 point where the blank has room and 10 point on tight blanks, since text never shrinks to fit.

Select several fields to change them together: Shift-click (or Ctrl-click, Cmd-click on a Mac) each one, drag a box across an empty part of the page, or press Ctrl+A (Cmd+A) for every field on the page. The panel reads *4 Fields Selected* and each setting applies to every selected field it fits — Font and Size skip checkboxes, for example, and the panel says "applies to 3 of 4". A setting the selected fields disagree on shows Mixed until you pick a value.

Placing fields precisely

Arrow keys move the selected fields 1 point at a time; hold Shift for 10 points.
Alt + arrow keys (Option on a Mac) resize by 1 point (Shift for 10) — right and down grow the box, left and up shrink it.
Drag any selected field to move the whole selection together.
With two or more selected, Align lines them up with the first field you selected: Left Edges, Tops, Same Width, or Same Height.
Delete or Backspace removes the selected fields, and Ctrl+Z (Cmd+Z on a Mac) or the Undo button takes back the last change — up to 50 steps. Undo resets when you save.
Duplicate (Ctrl+D) makes a copy of the selected fields just beside them. Copy (Ctrl+C) and Paste (Ctrl+V) put copies in the same spot on the page you're viewing — flip to another page before pasting to repeat a header block on every page. Buttons for all three sit above the field settings.
A copy is a new, separate field: same type, size, font and settings, but the client answers it separately. Label text you wrote is copied; a client's answer never is.
Escape clears the selection. The keys do nothing while your cursor is in a text box, so typing a label is unaffected.

Correcting the PDF

Found a mistake in the form itself? Fix the original, then swap it in with Replace PDF — every field keeps its position, size and settings, so nothing has to be placed again. It's in the item's ⋯ menu while you're composing a request or editing a template, and a button in the form editor on a request that's already saved.

Fields are placed as a share of the page, so on a corrected version of the same form every box lands exactly where it was. Before swapping, docEvault checks the new PDF: if it has fewer pages, it tells you how many fields sit on the missing pages (they're removed if you go ahead); if a page is a different size (Letter swapped for Legal, say), it warns that the fields there stretch with the page so you can check them. Otherwise it swaps straight away.

Once the form is out to the contact, Unpublish to Edit first, the same as changing fields. If the contact has already started typing answers, the PDF can't be replaced — their answers were given against the old version.

Removing a form's PDF from an item removes the form set up on it too.

Linked answers

When the same answer belongs in several places — the client's name at the top of every page, a case number on each page of a court form — select those fields (they must all be the same type: text, date, dropdown or checkbox) and click Link Answers. The client types the answer once and every linked copy shows it, on screen and in the finished PDF; it counts as one answer in their progress.

Linked fields show a small *Linked* tag while you're setting up the form. Select one to see how many copies share its answer, Select Linked to pick the ones on the page you're viewing, or Unlink to make it independent again. A copy of a linked field is linked too, so you can link the name field once, then copy and paste it onto each page. Linked dropdowns share one list of choices.

Field types

Text — a line or paragraph the contact types into.
Checkbox — a single yes/no box.
Date — a date picker; the contact's browser shows its native date control.
Dropdown — a fixed list of choices you define when you place the field (at least two options).
Label — text *you* write, not the contact. Use it for a title or heading the source document is missing, a section note, or anything else that should print exactly as you typed it. Place it like any other field, but type its text while you're setting up the form — the contact never sees an input for it, just the printed text. A label needs text before you can publish.
Signature and Initials — these are handled by our e-signature provider rather than typed in: submitting the form hands the contact straight to a signing step for those fields, no separate email or second visit needed. Like e-signatures, these and Date Signed are on the Professional and Enterprise plans and in every free trial; on Easy Start they show a *PRO* tag, and Detect Fields leaves signature blanks off.
Date Signed — fills in automatically with the day the contact signs; they never type it. It's part of the signing step, so a form with a Date Signed field also needs a Signature or Initials field before you can publish it. (Use Date instead for any other date you want the contact to enter.)

Attaching one to a request

A form can be attached to a document request, in which case your contact sees it in their portal alongside the checklist, flagged as something to complete first. This is the usual setup: they complete the form and upload their supporting documents in the same sitting.

Any instructions you write on the document carry into the fill screen itself, not just the checklist card — so a note like "have your ID ready, page 2 asks for the number on it" stays visible while they're actually filling the form out, not just before they open it.

How the answers look

Text, date, dropdown, and label content are printed in each field's font and size — Times New Roman 12 point for a field you place, unless you changed it (fields placed before September 27, 2026 default to Helvetica 10 point) — never shrunk or stretched to fit the box. A single-line field centres its answer; a multi-line field starts at the top and wraps. The fill screen shows the text in that same font and size, so what your contact sees while typing is what ends up in the PDF. A checked checkbox prints as an X inside its box.

After submission

Once submitted, the completed form is filed on the item itself and the item is approved automatically — the form was completed on screen, so there is nothing to check for legibility or completeness the way there is with an upload. The finished PDF sits under the item on the request, and your contact can open it from their portal.

If the form includes a signature or initials field, submitting it starts the signing step straight away; the item then follows the e-signature states until the contact has signed.