Fill Flat PDFs, Scans & Images from Excel

Not every form comes as a fillable PDF. Many only exist as flat PDFs (printouts saved as PDF, scans) — or as pictures: a scan, a photocopy, a photo taken with your phone. ExForms makes all of them fillable.

If you can photograph it, you can fill it. Upload the file, place the fields once in the visual designer, and every Excel row becomes a completed form.

What Counts as "Flat"

You have What ExForms does
A PDF with no form fields (scan, printout, exported document) Detected automatically — the field placement designer opens so you can add fields
A PNG or JPG image of a form (scan or phone photo) Converted to a single-page PDF template on upload
A TIFF (including multi-page) Converted to a multi-page PDF template — one page per TIFF frame
A WEBP image (e.g. saved from a website) Converted to a single-page PDF template; generated documents come back as PNG (see below)

Upload them exactly like any other template file — in Add New Set or Edit Set → Choose Files. Maximum file size is 16 MB.

A photo is enough. A scanner isn't required — a reasonably straight, well-lit phone photo of a form works.

The Field Placement Designer

When ExForms detects a flat PDF (including every converted image), it offers to open — or opens automatically after upload — the field placement designer: a dialog that shows your document page by page so you can draw fields exactly where the blanks are.

You can also open it any time from Edit Set → the pushpin icon on a PDF file row.

Placing fields

  1. Pick a field type and draw a rectangle where the value should go.
  2. ExForms suggests a field name from the nearby label text — accept it or type your own.
  3. Fine-tune position and size by dragging the field or its corner grips.
  4. Shift+drag draws a selection box to select several fields at once — move or restyle them together. The Delete key removes selected fields.

Naming tip: name fields after your Excel column headers. AutoMap then maps everything instantly.

Field types

Type What it does
Text A text value from Excel. Font family, size, bold, color, and horizontal/vertical alignment are configurable.
Checkbox Checks the box when the Excel cell matches the checkbox's ON value (you choose it: Yes, X, 1, any text — just like a PDF editor's export value). Any other cell value leaves it unchecked.
Radio group One choice from a set of options; the Excel cell selects the option by its value.
QR code Generates a QR code from the cell value.
Barcode Generates a Code 128 barcode from the cell value.
Image Places a picture per row from a URL in the cell (PNG, JPG, GIF, BMP, TIFF, WEBP). Fit and alignment are configurable.
Repeating region A drawn area that repeats child-table rows as a grid — rows automatically shrink to fit the area if there are more rows than designed.

Mapping panel

The right-hand panel maps each placed field to an Excel table column:

  • Saved mappings are applied exactly as saved — green rows are matched, red rows show fields without a match.
  • AutoMap creates a fresh table in a new sheet of your linked workbook, with one column per placed field, and maps everything.
  • Refresh Tables re-reads your workbook if you've just added tables or columns.

Apply Fields

Apply Fields does three things in one step:

  1. Injects real PDF form fields at your drawn positions — the file becomes a genuine fillable PDF that works everywhere in ExForms (and in any PDF viewer).
  2. Extends your workbook: new fields become new columns in the mapped parent table; each repeating region becomes its own table in the mapped sheet.
  3. Saves the mapping automatically.

Re-opening the designer later always starts from your original document, so you can add, move, or remove fields safely — fields never stack or duplicate.

Generated Values and the "ExForms Data" Layer

Everything ExForms writes into generated documents — QR codes, barcodes, images, repeating-region rows, and (optionally) all field values — is placed on a dedicated PDF layer named ExForms Data. In PDF viewers that support layers you can toggle it to compare the filled form against the original page.

Turn on the Flatten toggle in the designer if you want generated documents to contain the values as permanent page content instead of editable form fields.

Image In, Image Out — or PDF: Your Choice

Files uploaded as images don't just fill — by default they come back as images, and each file has an output choice:

  • PNG in → filled PNG out; JPG in → filled JPG out — one image per page, pixel dimensions identical to your original.
  • Multi-page TIFF in → one filled multi-page TIFF out.
  • WEBP in → filled PNG out. WEBP is a web-delivery format with no writer in the document pipeline (and PDF itself has no WEBP support), so PNG — its lossless equivalent — is used. The file's Output dropdown shows Image (PNG) for these templates.
  • In the download zip, image outputs are in the Images/ folder; PDF outputs stay in PDF/.

Prefer PDFs from an image-sourced template? Each image-sourced file row in Edit Set shows an Output dropdown (📷 camera icon marks these files): choose Image (same as uploaded) or PDF per file.

Troubleshooting

  • "This PDF has no form fields" message — that's the flat-PDF detection working; click the button it offers to open the designer.
  • A checkbox stays empty — the Excel cell must match the field's ON value exactly (case doesn't matter). Check the ON value in the designer.
  • Repeating region looks cramped — rows autofit into the drawn area; draw the region taller or reduce the number of child rows sent.
  • Photo looks skewed in output — the output reproduces your upload; re-take the photo as straight-on as possible for best results.