How to Create Fillable PDF Form for FREE

[Music] hey everyone kevin here today i want to show you how you can create a fillable pdf form entirely for free if you've ever wanted to create a pdf form before you probably found that you have to get adobe acrobat and it works pretty well but it does also carry a hefty price tag of fifteen dollars per month today i'm going to show you some free software that will allow you to create fillable forms all right well let's jump on the computer and let's get started to create a pdf form we're going to use an application called libra office you can get this at the website libraoffice.org i've also included a link in the description of this video you can just click on that and that will bring you to this website libreoffice is kind of like microsoft office it has a similar set of applications the main difference is libreoffice is entirely free and it's also open source once you land on the home page you'll see a pretty prominent download now button let's click on this on the next page you'll see the version of libreoffice that you can install i chose to go with the most recent version over here on the right hand side you can choose your operating system it works across all different major platforms choose your operating system and then click on download and run through the installation process once you've finished downloading and installing libra office go down to your taskbar and type in libra office writer we're going to use the writer program to pull together our form and then to save it as a pdf form this drops me into libra office writer and if you've ever used an authoring app before chances are this will look very familiar here you have things like being able to choose the font the size you could set alignment and then here down below we have our canvas where we can start building our form now you probably notice that i already started creating just the basics of what i want to turn into a form so the kevin cookie company i put our logo up on top i typed in a header and then i also inserted a table with some different questions now right now it's not a form yet this is just the basic structure and i want to turn this into a form to create this area here i simply use tables you could insert a table you could define the number of columns and rows and you can very easily format something that looks like this if you really just want to follow along and do exactly what i'm doing i've included a link to this file in the description so you can click on that and then you can follow what i'm doing within libra office writer they have a whole bunch of very rich form tools and controls if we look up on top at all of these different menus there's one called form that seems pretty promising let's click on that within the form menu we have all of these different tools and right here you can insert things like text boxes check boxes option buttons there are all these different options that we have here and we'll run through what these do but before we do that i want to show you an even easier way to build a form instead of needing to go up to this menu here click on forum and then choose the box that we want to insert instead we can go over to the view menu up on top if we click on view let's go down to toolbars and within this list we see all these other toolbars that we can turn on one of them is called form controls let's click on this one this opens up a set of form controls and it sits right up alongside our document and this has a similar set of controls to what we have in this form menu now at least personally i think it's a little bit easier to access and easier to build out a form when you have it sitting right next to your forum here i can simply drag things over and start building things out instead of needing to go to this menu okay we now have all the tools that we need to start building out this form and before we start inserting different items into our form i want to turn on one thing if we go over to all of our tools over here there's an option called forum design let's click on that when we click on form design you'll notice that it adds an extra toolbar down here and all the way on the right hand side of this toolbar there are two options one of them is display grid so here we could turn on a grid it helps with aligning different fields on this form also there's another option called snap to grid and when you turn on snap to grid let's say you want to insert a text field or maybe you want to insert some option buttons this will help to just make sure you get everything aligned just right now that i have snap to grid turned on i'm ready to start building my cookie order form the quicker i can build this the quicker i can start getting orders the first question here is your full name i need someone's name if they order cookies otherwise who am i sending it to over on the right hand side here i have all my form controls and one of them is for a text box this seems like a good one for someone to enter their name into to insert a text box i'll click on this option and here you see it's now pressed in when i bring my mouse cursor over you'll see that there are cross hairs here and i can now draw my text box so let me draw it right here next to your full name and once i'm satisfied with the position i'll release i've now inserted my text box and people can start typing in their name here but i also have the option to configure some properties for this text box here i can double click on the text box and here i have a whole bunch of different properties that i can configure for example right up near the top i can type in a name for this text box and text box one really isn't that descriptive so here i can change it to your full name as we look down here there are a whole bunch of other properties that i can also configure i want to call out some of the ones that i found more interesting right up here near the top you can set the max text length so let's say you want someone to type in a response but you don't want them to type in too much you can restrict it to a certain number of characters right now it's set to zero meaning that people can enter in any number of texts that they want as i scroll down this list once again there are many different settings and feel free to go through to see what these different settings are as i go down there's another one called default text and this is text that'll appear in the text box before someone goes in and type something so maybe i want to say something like enter your full name here i also have some other settings like font alignment i could even set the border for this text box you could go with a 3d look a flat look so you have many different options in here once again feel free to go here to see what all you can do for now though i'm satisfied so i'll simply click on the x and check that out i now have a text box on my form if i want to test it out i can go over to my form controls and currently and by default it's in design mode so what design mode means is well i could click on the text box i could jump into properties but maybe i want to see how it actually works well here i could click on design mode and this now exits me from design mode so now i can click into the text box and i could try entering text in here so let's say you set a limit to the amount of text you can actually test to make sure that it works so just a quick tip on how you can test things out but for now i want to keep building out my form so let me go back into design mode now that i'm back in design mode let me continue building out my form for the next question i want to know what cookie type someone wants to order and also the quantity that they want to order now with the cookie type we only have a set number of cookies that someone can order chocolate chip all the way through white chocolate macadamia nut so a text box doesn't make sense here because someone could type in a cookie that we don't have if i look over at the form controls there is the option to insert a list box so i can pre-define what the different options are and then someone can choose from that list so here i'll select the list box and just like before let me draw my list box on this form these look like good dimensions so i'll release now here i have my list box but there's nothing currently in this list here i can exit design mode and here i can confirm that the list is empty i'll go back into design mode and to define what options should show up in here just like we did with the text box let's double click on this to open up the properties this opens up the list box properties and just like before i could go through set a name and i have a whole bunch of properties that are similar to the one that we saw with the text box if i scroll down here there's an option here for list entries and this is where i can define what options show up in the list i'll click on this drop down and right here this opens up a text box here i can start entering in all of the different options i'll paste in all of the cookies that we offer here at the kevin cookie company and in the list if you want to separate the different options simply enter in a line hit enter and then type in the next option i've typed in the six different types of cookies that we offer once i'm done let's click on ok here now you'll see all of the list entries it put it in quotes and it also used a semicolon to separate them now all the other settings look fine to me so i'll click out back now on the main page let's check to make sure it added these items to the list i'll exit design mode once again and when i click on the list look at this i now have all of the different cookie options so it's working exactly how i want it to let's now go back into design mode one thing you might have noticed is when we inserted the list box right next to it there's also the option for a combo box what is a combo box and when would you use that compared to a list box well with a combo box it behaves mostly the same as a list box that we just inserted except along with being able to choose one of the predefined options you can also type in your own response so it has a little bit more functionality now i'm not going to insert it but i just wanted to make sure you understand what the difference is and when you might want to use it now let's keep building out this form and next i also want to know the quantity of cookies that someone wants to order and right here in the form control there's the option to insert a numerical field so this will require that it's a number that someone enters i'll click on this and just like we've been doing all along here i'll draw a box and i'll just make sure to line it up with all the other boxes so once again one of the benefits of turning on snap to grid here i'll insert my box and i'm not going to go in and edit any of the properties i think they're all fine as is next i want to have customers fill out their preferred delivery method and at the kevin cookie company we have three different delivery options and a customer can only choose one of them so i don't want someone choosing two different delivery methods if i look over at the form control there's something called an option button also known as a radio button so here you can only select one option with the check box on the other hand you can select multiple check boxes so an option button will really work the best for this once again i'll click on this option and here i can draw my option buttons on the screen i'll insert one and let me go through and add three different option buttons remember we have three different delivery methods here i'll put all three in now that i've inserted my option buttons i want to customize what these options are so here let me click into the first one right over here i can see that it's option button one and right now the label is simply option button i want to change this to match what the first delivery method is and this might sound a little bit unconventional but we do offer pigeon delivery if you live relatively close to our factory so i'll type in pidgin i've now typed in the label and there's one more field that's extremely important to fill in here's something called group name when we inserted all of these option buttons we have to call out that all of these are part of the same group so that way when i click on one option button it'll deselect one of the other ones especially if we use option buttons elsewhere on this form if we don't use a group name it'll think that they're all part of the same group and so if maybe i'm in another question i select one of these option buttons it'll deselect the option from a previous question so over here i'll type in a group name called delivery next i'll click into the next option button and here i want to define the label for this one and this one is drone delivery yes this is a little bit friendlier we're not using animals to deliver but it does require lots and lots of batteries right down here i could also type in a group name and once again i want the group name to match the group name from pidgin because they are going to be in the same group so here too i'll type in delivery once i'm done i'll click on the x and let me jump into the third option button and for the label i'm going to type in pneumatic tube if you don't know what this is when you go to the bank and you're sending in your say check to the teller you typically use a pneumatic tube we have quite an advanced system of tubes under cities that we can use to deliver cookies right down here i also want to make sure i add it to the same group so i'll type in delivery once i'm done let's click on x next i want to enter in the desired delivery date and over here there's the option to insert a date field i'll select that and just like we've been doing all along i'll draw out this box when i click into the box here too i can also access the properties and here i can set what the date format looks like i'm just going to leave it set to the default and then close this out next i want to enter in a text field where people can type in how they heard about us and you'd really be surprised but when i ask people how they heard about us some people tell us their life story so i need to make sure i put in a text box that allows a little bit of space for people to express themselves over here in the form controls once again let's insert a text box and just like we've been doing all along just draw it within this area of the table i've now inserted my text box let's double click on it this opens up the text box properties and i'll leave most of these defaults as is but there is one interesting one if we go down here right now we'll see that the text type is set to single line so i've inserted a pretty big text box but right now it's only a single line if i click on this i can set it to multi-line so here they can type in a lot more text or you could even do multi-line with formatting i'm going to set it to multi-line that looks good and then i'll close out let's test this out here i'll exit design mode and i can type in the box i'll type in hello and here now i can go down and i can type in multiple lines look at that so now someone can type in a whole bunch of text about how they heard about us on this forum i have a little bit of extra space at the top and this is just like your standard authoring tool i can click up there and i can hit the delete key and that removes that extra space and even down below i have a little bit of extra space underneath my text box here i'll click the backspace key and that too will also remove that extra space so it's very easy to move things around and to format it so your form looks exactly how you want it to look now i'm almost done creating my forum i'll go back into design mode and here i want people to check that they agree with our terms i want to just make sure if you're placing an order that you agree with all these terms over in the form control i can insert a check box and here i'll place it right here and i could just draw the check box and that looks pretty good let me expand this just a little bit and let me double click in here i can see the label and maybe i'll add some text that says i agree with the terms once i'm all done i'll click on the x and here now you see the check box now it looks like the s is a little bit cut off here so i can go back click on the checkbox and let me expand it a little bit so all the text appears now right now this form is looking pretty good and i think i'm ready to turn it into a pdf to turn this into a pdf it's extremely easy right up here on the top bar there's an icon right here that says export directly as pdf let's click on that this opens up the windows file picker and i can now type in a file name for my pdf let me call this cookie order form once i'm done typing in the file name i'll go over here and click on save i've now successfully exported this file as a pdf however i do want to show you one other way you can export your form that gives you a little bit more control if that's what you desire let's go up to the top left hand corner and click on file on this list there's an option to export as and here we can export as pdf previously we exported directly as a pdf but let's go here to see what other options we have this opens up a prompt with a whole bunch of different pdf options so you can set the pages that you want to export and over here there's the option to create a pdf form we want this to be a form so we want to make sure that's checked here you could also choose the submit format so you can go with fdf pdf you have a number of different options for creating your form now for the most part i'm going to leave these as is but i did want to show that you do have a few additional options let's now open up the form that we created here now i see my new cookie order form and it's a pdf file let's click into this to see how it works this opens up the pdf form and we now have our own pdf form congratulations we successfully created it here i can go through and here i see the text box and it includes our default text here i could type in my name i could also choose my cookie type and look at that the drop down list is working just like we expected i'll choose chocolate chip and i am hungry so i'm going to order 999 of these it's going to be a big order down below we have our preferred delivery method and remember we turned these into a group so here when i check or select one of these option buttons it'll switch the selection i could fill out the rest of this and here all agree to these terms i didn't read the text but i'm sure it's pretty reasonable now right up above we can print out this pdf and when i print it it'll print out everything that i filled out in this form also if i decide i want to save this form it'll save all of my different entries so it truly is a fully functional pdf form and once again we were able to do this for free using libra office writer how cool is that all right well that's how easy it is to create a fillable form if this video helped you please give it a thumbs up to see more videos like this in the future make sure to hit that subscribe button also if you want to see me cover any other videos on this channel leave a note down below alright well that's all i had for you today i hope you enjoyed and as always i hope to see you next time bye [Music] you

Channel: Kevin Stratvert

Views: 237,610

Rating: 4.97014 out of 5

Keywords: kevin stratvert, pdf, pdf form, fillable pdf form, fillable, form, fillable form pdf, adobe, adobe pdf, fillable form, how to create a fillable form, make, create, libre office, libreoffice, writer, create form, form pdf, pdf fillable form, how to make fillable form, pdfs, how to create a fillable pdf form, create a form, make a form, tutorial, how to, stratvert, kevin, how to make a fillable pdf, fillable pdf, freem, guide, help, export, export pdf, list, text box, option, checkbox, combo

Id: 6cYpJJxvZMc

Length: 19min 29sec (1169 seconds)

Published: Fri Mar 12 2021