Flatten a PDF
Choose a PDF with a filled-in form or comments. They are drawn into the pages on your device, and nothing is uploaded.
Form fields and comments become part of the page: they look the same, but can no longer be changed.
Runs qpdf in your browser. Open-source licenses
How to flatten a PDF
Choose your file, or drop it on the box above.
Select Flatten PDF.
Save the new file. Its fields and comments look as they did, but can no longer be changed.
What flattening does
A filled-in form keeps its answers in fields that anyone can change, and some readers or printers show them differently or not at all. Flattening draws each field, and each comment the file shows, such as a highlight or a stamp, into the page itself, as it looks now.
Links stay links you can click. A password field is never drawn: its hidden text is removed, not printed into the page.
The pages, their text and their images are not changed.
Forms this tool keeps as they are
Some forms ask the reader to draw their answers each time. The tool draws them first, but only for text in the Latin alphabet, with its accents: for answers in other scripts, such as Greek, Cyrillic or Chinese, the form's fields are kept as fields, and the page says so. The same goes for letter-by-letter boxes and check boxes the form leaves the reader to draw.
An XFA form, a kind made with Adobe LiveCycle, cannot be flattened here: the file is given back unchanged, and the page says so.
Your file never leaves your device
The file is flattened in your browser with qpdf, an open-source PDF library built to run on your device. No file, page or file name is sent to us or to anyone else. The tool itself loads only when you start, so the page stays fast.
How large can the file be?
It depends on your device's memory. If the file is too large for your device, the tool says so before it starts, rather than letting the browser close the tab.
A file protected with a password opens once you type its own password on this page, and the new file has no password. We never get around a file's protection.
Related tools
- Sign PDF: Add your drawn or typed signature to a file.
- Protect PDF: Lock a file with a password, encrypted on your device.
- Compress PDF: Make a file smaller, or at or under a size you type.
- Merge PDF: Join several files into one, in the order you choose.
- Split PDF: Save pages or ranges of a file as new files.