Filling in PDF forms without Adobe Acrobat?

Does anyone know if there is a cheaper alternative to Adobe Acrobat for filling in PDF forms? My wife is doing a TESOL masters through an university’s online service, and all the documents they send her for her coursework have to be filled in electronically and are in PDF format. She only has an Aussie credit card and the price of Acrobat beyond us (Aussie is very expensive) since our son was born. All we have at the moment is the latest Open Office with a PDF extension, but I can’t see if there is a way to use it to edit blank fields in forms. Thanks in advance for any help!

Have you tried Foxit? www.foxitsoftware.com

The reader and creator and editor are free I think, or else shareware (the printer puts a little header line on top) - might give it a shot, much faster than PDF too.

Acrobat Reader (presuming the pdf files are “enabled” which seems likely,) this from the Adobe website

"Q. Can I add comments to a PDF file with Adobe Reader?

A. PDF authors using Adobe LiveCycle™ enterprise server and design software can activate special features in their documents that provide additional functionality. These enabled Adobe PDF files allow people with Adobe Reader to save the file to a local hard drive, fill out forms, add comments and other markups, share it with others, and submit a completed document electronically. In addition, Adobe PDF files can be enabled to allow people to digitally sign, certify, and authenticate a document."

You may want to consider converting to Word format, filling in the details and then converting back to pdf. Pdf’s aren’t generally made to be edited.

Try a Google search for pdf to word converters.

I’m very surprised she’s having to do this, frankly. Are you sure this isn’t in some sort of editable format that doesn’t require a full version of Acrobat, but rather just the reader?

A form (for electronic submission) is meant to be edited by definition.

What Iris said.

Have you tried downloading Adobe Reader? It’s free.

PDFs that are designed to have users enter their data are common. Here’s an example:
irs.gov/pub/irs-pdf/f1040.pdf
Adobe Reader, not Acrobat, is all that’s needed for that.

I’ve just noticed Tempo Gain beat me to it on the whole editable pdf thing.

Formulate Pro or Preview (if you got a mac). Both freeware

And i missed that you mentioned Reader. That makes us even.

Try Adobe Reader if you want to use what most people use. However, I’m pretty sure it doesn’t let you save your text for any fields that you type in.

Use Foxit, as mentioned above, and you’ll be able to save your text. It’s much better to be able to save what you’ve done in case you want to make any changes later on. I highly recommend Foxit. I don’t know of any reason to use Adobe Reader over Foxit, especially for filing in PDF forms.

Edit: Both of these programs are free.