When the iPad came out earlier this year I saw it as an ideal solution for carrying around my camera equipment manuals and demo scripts in Adobe PDF. Although iOS supports PDF in its core, Apple didn't initially provide a way to view PDFs outside of Mail. As you might imagine this opened the door to 3rd parties to come out with PDF viewing Apps. I settled in on Readdle Docs and have been quite happy with using it to store and view my PDFs on the iPad. There are a few great Apps for this purpose. The next round of updates from all of these Apps seems to now be focused on PDF annotation and markup. Readdle has been adding a few of these features to Readdle Docs and for the most part that App still offers everything I need personally, but they just released PDF Expert for iPad to go even further. If markup is important to you then you should start here instead of Readdle Docs. Like I said, there are a few great Apps for PDF viewing out there that have also updated their markup features too. The one thing that will keep me looking at PDF Expert and it's the one thing that people have been asking for from day one, you guessed it…
PDF Forms Fill-in is on the way
In talking with the developer I raised the question on everyone's mind. Will this App allow PDF form fill-in? The answer was "It's coming." Yes, they gave me a time frame and no I can't tell you what it is, but let's say it's sooner than later. I'll tell you what I told them. Adding PDF form fill-in to this App will push you guys over the top! Since Apps typically have free updates I would feel comfortable (although I can't guarantee it – I don't work for them) that if you get this App now, you can start using it now and then have PDF form fill-in in the near future.
PDF Expert offers
- Highlight text
- Notes
- Markup/drawing with your finger
- Create your own Bookmarks
- Underline and Strikethrough
- Online sharing via: Email, MobileMe iDisk, Dropbox, Google Docs, FPT, SFTP & WebDAV as well as WiFi sharing
- App level password protection
- You can also Zip and move PDFs into folders that you create in the App
You can get PDF Expert here from the 
Sounds great, why not 5 stars?
In order to earn a 5 star rating from me the App has to be near perfect. In addition to waiting for PDF forms fill-in, I did experience a couple of crashes in particular while adding PDF notes. I'd like to see the app be a little more stable and add the forms fill-in feature and then I'd have no problem giving it 5 stars.
While the app is certainly very good as far as how you can highlight and write on the document, the lack of manual typing (never mind auto fill) for forms is a huge oversight. At present, you cannot fill in any pdf form with this app. There are a number of apps out there that allow you to type into a pdf form, so until this happens, I think the rating you provided is a little high for version 1.
Cheeky,
Don’t be Cheeky, which apps allow someone to fill out pdf forms on their iPads!? I’m a realtor and have been dying to use that feature!
Thanks!
Yeah, I still have yet to find an app that allows you to fill in form fields and save. That would be huge. Something realtors, sales reps, doctors, and countless other professions could use.
TYVM you’ve solved all my porlmbes
How to view a form on the iPad. Normally, a filled in form will just be viewed as the original form, empty.
1. The problem is that Apple has not released the operating system code that would allow an Adobe Acrobat file that had been ‘filled in’ to be viewed on an iPad.
2. This problem would be solved if you could ‘print to pdf’ in Adobe Acrobat. Then, all the text would be graphically embedded and you could read it on an iPad. But, Adobe Acrobat won’t allow you to do that. You can only save the document.
To have an iPad readable document of a ‘filled in’ Adobe Acrobat form, do the following:
3. For example, on a Mac, write your Form using Adobe Acrobat Pro and save to your desktop. Reopen the document using the software application ‘Preview’. You can ‘print to pdf’ in the Preview software. The new document has all the ‘filled in’ text embedded. This means it now can be viewed on an iPad. I trialled this and it does work with the iBooks reader,GoodReader, Annotate PDF and several other pdf viewers.
There surely is a way to do this just as easily with Windows and Adobe Acrobat. And it’s easy. Really easy.
The only caveat is that any Adobe Acrobat form sent this way cannot be edited. It’s like a pdf document, you cannot change it. Well, technically you could in Adobe Illustrator, yet that’s a whole other topic. The other is that you cannot fill in forms on an iPad.
Forms fill-in is here!
I created a form with drop down list using Adobe Acrobat on Windows and email to my iPad using PDF Expert. It read and fill in form perfectly.
Now the problem
After filling in the form, I email it out and open using Windows but it only shows a empty form. Saw somewhere that I need to convert it to Static PDF Form but how do I do that?
Did you try saving a copy of the form after you filled it out first before emailing?
Thanks for sharing this info…..the app is Great as I along with everyone that needed form tillable PDF ….thanks again
Hi, I create a form with drop down list using Adobe Acrobat on Windows and email to my iPad. Using the APP PDF Expert, It read and fill in form perfectly.
Now the problem
If I don’t finish to fill in the form, and I want to save it so I can finish it later.
I open the form to be completed, but it don’t save the preliminary data, it save like a default setting without the preliminary data.
How I can do this.