Fillable PDF forms are much more convenient than filling out pieces of paper by hand, but wouldn’t it be nice to save the forms that you’ve filled out? Nothing would be worse than having to fill out the same boring paperwork twice!
Having a filled out copy of the form isn’t just good “for your records,” it’s also useful if you notice a typo or small mistake after printing out the form. If you accidentally close Adobe Reader, then you’ll have to type in all that information again!
Fortunately there is a free PDF viewing program that allows you fill out fillable forms and save the changes, to be edited later if need be: PDF-XChange Viewer.
After you install PDF-XChange Viewer, open your fillable PDF form (right-click and choose Open With… if PDF-XChange Viewer isn’t the default for opening PDFs).
Fill out the form.
Click on File > Save, or just press Ctrl+S.
Close the file. If you open it again, you will see that your changes are still intact! In fact, even if you open this file with Adobe Reader, you will find that your changes are still there.
That’s all you need to do!
We did run into a few cases where the filled out form didn’t open quite right in Adobe Reader, even though it still looked fine in PDF-XChange Viewer. You should keep Adobe Reader around just to confirm that your filled out forms look right if you have to send them digitally.
PDF-XChange Viewer is a great all-purpose PDF viewer, and the ability to save filled out PDF forms makes it even better!