Apple picker You probably all know it. Forms. Currently, for example, for income tax returns. How to fill them if you don't have a specialized application for that and still don't want to print them and fill them in manually? You will also be able to sign them in Preview. Don't you believe?
Preview is a powerful helper
The Preview application is a very powerful helper, even if it doesn't look like it at first glance. Today we will look at how to fill with its help Any PDF form (even one that is not modified/prepared for electronic filling). Preview can handle it. The preview detects lines (or frames for filling) in PDF and can place e.g. text on them. Let's try it in practice.
- Download any PDF form (currently suitable e.g. Personal income tax returns).
- Open it in the Preview application.
- Click the mouse in the first window and start typing. Preview automatically detects bounded space and allows you to insert text.
- Repeat with all necessary boxes - Preview detects vertical separators as well as horizontal lines (even if they are only "dotted") and correctly places the first letter
[do action=”tip”]Interactive versions (both in PDF and XLS) are also available for Personal Income Tax Returns and other forms, but we will ignore them for the purposes of this demo.[/do]
If you finish writing and click on another part of the form with the mouse, the Preview will create a separate object from the inserted text, which can then be moved, resized and further worked with.
If you want further adjustments (e.g. different font, size, color) or other graphic elements (line, frame, arrow, bubbles, ...), just display the toolbar - select an item from the menu View » Show editing toolbar (or Shift + Cmd + A, or click the icon). After that, other options will appear and you can experiment (this menu is also available in the menu Tools » Annotation, where you can immediately remember the keyboard shortcut for frequently used tools).
In the case of more complex frames (e.g. for entering the birth number in the pre-prepared "piges"), the Preview does not catch, but it can be solved by selecting a tool from the toolbar text (see image above), you stretch the editing frame around the entire field and then you can achieve the desired result with just the right size/type of font and spaces.
How about a signature? Do I have to print it?
But not at all! Apple thought of this too. And he did it really cleverly. Let's go through the creation of an "electronic" signature step by step:
- Take a white paper and a pencil.
- Sign yourself (ideally a little bigger than usual, it will be digitized better).
- From the toolbar, click the tiny arrow next to the Signature tool (see image below).
- Select an option from the menu Create signature with: FaceTime HD camera (built-in).
- A signature capture window will appear - hold the paper with your signature in front of the camera (keep it on the blue line), after a while a mirrored vector version will appear on the right
- Click the button Accept and it is done!
Of course, you need a built-in camera to "scan" like this, but most Mac computers have one.
To place the signature, you only need to click on the icon Signature (or select the menu Tools » Annotation » Signature) and move the mouse to the place where the signature should be placed. If there is a horizontal line in the form, Preview will automatically detect it and offer the exact location (the line is shaded blue). If the signature is incorrectly sized, it can be easily made larger or smaller or its color changed.
You can have more signatures and using Signature manager switch between them (can be via Settings » Signatures, or by choice Signature management after clicking the arrow next to the signature icon).
Adding or removing pages
If you need to add or remove pages or change their order, it can be done with classic drag & drop. Just view the sidebar with a preview of the pages (View » Thumbnails, or Alt + Cmd + 2) and using drag & drop either drag the page/pages from another document, change their order or even delete them (using Backspace/Delete).
Going back in history
If you make a mistake and want to go back to one of the previous versions, use the option File » Return to » Browse all versions. You'll see an interface similar to Time Machine recovery, and you can, like Michael Douglas did in Scandal Reveal, go through all the versions and restore the one you need.
How does the competition do it?
The competing Adobe Reader can also add text to PDF, but it is not nearly as user-friendly (e.g. it cannot place exactly on lines, so a little precision is required when positioning the cursor) and of course it cannot write a signature (only a "cheat" in the form of a pseudo-writing font ). On the other hand, it can add checkmarks, which must be bypassed in the Preview by typing a capital X. But you can only dream about some work with pages (adding, changing the order, deleting), Reader from Adobe cannot do that.
Cool
Speaking of which, how can I see in the Preview app if and by whom a document has been signed?
Unfortunately, I didn't find such an option in Preview... ;-(
Wow this helped me a lot! More tutorials like this :-) Thank you very much.
:D It didn't go very well on the Slovak tax return...
Preview is one of the best applications available on Mac, it offers a lot of options, it doesn't load the system and it runs at rocket speed... a small point - considering that a signature added to a document in this way, however handy it is, has no legal weight, I would rather appreciate some guidance or experience with installing a qualified certificate on a Mac and using it. Anyway, thanks for the tutorial!
Why should it have no legal weight? Today, electronically stored signatures are printed on documents quite routinely.
Today it is hard to tell if it is a real signature or a good scan. However, for a digital signature to have legal weight, this signature must be registered with the appropriate authorities, which few of us have :) But I happily use it too, no one analyzes it. But if it was an inheritance proceeding with a large property, I would be careful :)
May I ask if it matters what version of Mac I have? I have 4.1 installed and unfortunately according to the description in the article it doesn't work for me... Thanks a lot.
That's quite likely, these procedures are on version 6.0.1 (from Mountain Lion 10.8.2). Unfortunately, it is possible that not everything works according to my description on older versions.
Perfect, thank you very much :)
Dear people, this article is exactly why I have WIN7 on AIR. I just don't want to deal with it that way. I need everything to work IMMEDIATELY and I don't have time to deal with HOT TIPS and Google everything, etc.
Please don't delete my post, I probably won't buy another PC like AIR, but with honest WIN. Every coin has 2 sides...
So how do you do all this on win7 without installing the application and searching for "hot tips"? no integrated tool/program in win can work with PDF like this... these are hints for functions in the system, not for things that one has to install and learn to work with. Thanks for me!
So in response to your comment: "It will never work on win ty right away, let alone search for tips".
I fill out PDF forms without installing anything!! Of course I had to download Adobe first…
I find it a bit mind boggling and pointless. There is an interactive PDF that calculates the results by itself and contains checks, sums, linking, but I just decide to fill out a PDF intended only for printing, where I have to calculate everything by hand or in the interactive form. In other words, am I doing something that will not make my job easier, but the exact opposite?
Unfortunately, the preview/preview is very weak in the display compatibility of the more intelligent PDFs. E.g. the official declaration form for the DPFO manages 85% (some elements are displayed differently than they were intended, others such as the QR/bar code in the footer are not displayed correctly at all). Other forms - the overview for social security/insurance pension will not be displayed at all to be sure. So all that remains is to install the slow, but fully functional Adobe Reader for these purposes.
But even if I use AR, I find that although the MAC prints normally to PDF, it somehow refuses to print PDF to PDF. I.e. if I want to fix the result in an uneditable form, it is not possible in the usual way (it is not enough to just save - then anyone could make changes in the filled-in form).
And a scanned signature for a tax return and for anything other than decorative purposes?!?!?! I recommend deleting it quickly and completely before anyone gets in trouble. It's a nice feature that the MAC can scan the signature, but for God's sake in our parts it's completely useless for official documents that require written form. Formally speaking, the document is unsigned - whoever hands it over to the office, it's as if he didn't hand over anything. God forbid anyone would think of signing a contract like that. The only proper way to sign a PDF with that DPFO is to electronically sign with a qualified certificate. And even though I have it, I haven't yet found a way on MAC to sign the PDF and thereby fix the content. I will be grateful if someone came up with.
Get WIN and you've got it!
but my fart is in WIN - I work with win at work. and to sum it up like this:
– I can't even fart natively in WIN with PDF. I have to install that Reader anyway - so back to normal stuff, Preview is miles and miles ahead of what I have available in WIN;
– The Reader for WIN is just as bad at signing as the one for MAC;
- the only difference is that in WIN I was finally able to "print" the document in the PDF creator, which can attach the description. But that is again a third-party SW, without which I can't even cross out a PDF when creating a PDF in WIN, while I can natively store at least the remaining 99% of documents that I don't need to sign with the payment card on the MAC - I believe that if I were to look for third-party tools, then I will succeed on that MAC too.
So, in summary – WIN is basically completely unsuitable for working with PDF, MAC natively handles 95+% of cases just fine. Thanks for that. My sigh was only due to the fact that just yesterday it would have been useful for me if he could manage even the other 2-3%. But that's more gluttony.
just to add after reading the responses to my post – the preview is an absolutely amazing tool in terms of nativeness and universality, which has no comparable equivalent in the WIN world (and I'm not talking about the equivalent I would have in the system without searches and installations). Nevertheless, it has its problems precisely in the area of interactive PDFs – work on compatibility there, and when printing on an electronic signature, I could do without two other completely ballast applications, which in principle I do not want.
Good tutorial, I didn't know about the signature trick yet and I've been using MAC for some time now. Of course, I prefer to fill out the tax return in a program that calculates everything for me, but I take the article only as a demonstration.
As Jindra Jelínek writes in the comment, I too have many times encountered many documents in .pdf that the preview did not display correctly and Adobe Reader did. However, after the recent update, which added functions that allow me to draw, write and make signatures in documents, on the basis of communication I = client/customer or I = colleague, the preview can be used very purposefully and creatively, where there is no need to have an officially verified signature.
Although I do not have an official signature with a certificate and I would probably only use it once a year, I would still be interested in an informative article dealing with the above issue.
Thanks a lot for the feedback. I'm glad that you understood that the PDF form for the tax return was just an example of what Preview can do in the basic installation of the operating system... :-)) There are tons of similar forms, for example, I had to fill out some documents for an accountant and an idea, that I print it, fill it out by hand, scan it and send it back, I just couldn't resist... :-)) In Preview it was a matter of time and I saved our forests... :-) If you are interested in similar tutorials (i.e. what is already in the basics of installing Mac OS, but mostly not much is known about it), so we will continue, I have more in store... :-)
wouldn't there be something about the electronic signature? I quite rub it both in the email and in the preview, but also anywhere else :)
what about PDF to PDF printing? is it okay?
is it somehow possible to use the scanned signature, for example in We Word or in other applications than in the preview? – sometimes the decoration would really fit on some document, but not necessarily on a PDF... :)
Hi
Hello, of course I can't... I also tried the tax return :-) I can't do it either...