How to Link Your Online Form Fields with PDF Through Smart PDF Forms

March 12, 2024

When you upload your PDF, the Jotform Smart PDF Forms may not detect some of the fields. If this happens, you can adjust field connections manually.

There are two different field types that you can add: an online form field and a PDF field. 

Online form fields are the ones you add to your online form. Whenever you add a new field to your online form, a corresponding field will automatically be added to your PDF, and the two fields will be connected by default.

You can add these fields from the Add New Element tab in the Form Builder, just as you would for regular forms.

Mapping Input Fields

When you add a new field to your online form, the corresponding PDF fields appear as green boxes at the top of the original PDF. You can change the location of these fields by dragging them where you want them to be. You can also resize them. When you click on one of these fields, it will turn blue like all other PDF fields.

Each new field added to the online form will appear at the top of the active page of the original PDF. As mentioned above, you can change the location of the field by dragging it to the right place.

If you decide to change the field type — for example, from Full Name as shown in the clip above to a Short Text element, simply remove the field from the online form, and the field in the original PDF will be removed as well.

Note: Deleting the field in the original PDF will not remove the field in the online form. 

Mapping Elements with Multiple Fields

Now, let’s go to fields with multiple input or selection boxes. These are Single Choice, Multiple Choice, Address, and Input Table. Let’s take the address field. If you have an address field in your original PDF, you don’t need to individually add a short text entry field to complete the field connections. You can add the address field, and each of the boxes will be mapped to the PDF just like any single text boxes. 

For single choice or multiple choice fields, you can map each of the selection boxes to your individual checkboxes in the original PDF, as seen below.

You can add any of the Form Builder fields/elements to the online form. However, some fields cannot be mapped to your PDF, including Appointment, Product List, Image, File Upload, Captcha, Spinner, Star Rating, and Scale Rating.

You cannot edit your PDF form with Jotform Smart PDF Forms. If you need to edit your PDF form, you can do it with external tools such as Adobe Acrobat editor or online tools. After editing the PDF, you can re-import it to Jotform Smart PDF Forms. To update or replace your current PDF through Jotform Smart PDF Forms, please follow the steps from the following guide: How to Update the PDF Through Smart PDF Forms

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