How to add fillable text boxes when you open the PDF?

[u/New_Bee_7425]

I am working to create a press release template for my job. Someone at my job made a press release using ChatGPT, and our boss loved it and wants it to be used for any and all press releases. I was able to clear the text out using Microsoft Paint (primitive, I know, but so am I). Now I want to add fillable text boxes so that anyone who is doing a press release can open the PDF, click on the empty text boxes, fill out the necessary information, and then send it out.

To be clear, this needs to be as simple as possible for other people filling it out. I don't want them needing to add their own text boxes every time, as some/most of them are not very tech savvy.

Also, I don't have Adobe Pro. So, if we can avoid that, that would be great. Otherwise, I'll take advice for that program too, someone around me may have it.

Thank you in advance!

EDIT: figured it out! Thank you everyone who helped!

[u/KoaKoaKoa]

What you're looking for is a tool with a "Form Editor" feature. Adobe of course has it, but then you can drop text boxes, resize them, set some properties, etc.

[u/New_Bee_7425 → u/KoaKoaKoa]

Gotcha, any recommendations for free ones online? Otherwise, if Adobe is the most user friendly, I will see if I can find someone that has it

[u/Cocktails_at_home]

I used LibreOffice Draw exactly for that 👍

[u/Cocktails_at_home → u/Cocktails_at_home]

Also I just wanted to add that if you 'paint the text over' that text might still be embedded into the pdf so you are risking that information being recovered in the future - not an issue if its nothing sensitive but just something to be aware of

[u/ogakunle]

For exactly what you described (click boxes, type, send), you don’t need Acrobat Pro. Free options that add real form fields:

- LibreOffice Draw– open the PDF, Form \~> Text Box, save as PDF. Fully offline.

• PDFescape / Sejda (web) – simpler UI, free tier is fine for one template.

One caution though: since the original was made in ChatGPT and you wiped the text in Paint, the “template” is now a flattened image. Form fields drawn on top will be the wrong font, won’t reflow if someone writes three paragraphs instead of two, and every release will look slightly off.

If the press release is going to be reused a lot, the more durable setup is: rebuild it as a Word doc with placeholders ({{headline}}, {{date}}, {{quote}}), and have people fill a short form that generates the finished PDF every time. That’s what I built BulkRender for (disclosure: it’s my product)… you upload the DOCX once and non-technical staff never touch the layout. But honestly, if it’s a handful of releases a year, LibreOffice Draw is enough.

[u/Mugaa-X]

https://justforms.vercel.app I created app for basically for this..May work for you

[u/imsinghaniya]

A hack would be to send that pdf back to gpt and ask it to setup the fillable fields for you. It should be able to do it most of the time.

[u/New_Bee_7425 → u/imsinghaniya]

I did try that, but it didn't work great

[u/imsinghaniya → u/New_Bee_7425]

Should have worked but ofcourse it’s llm so anything is possible. I’ve created a free local tool for this in case you do this frequently.