How To Make A PDF Fillable In Canva (Free and Paid)

Over 5 years, I’ve been creating tons of PDF lead magnets, content upgrades, templates and checklists for my students, clients and social media audience.

This has helped me build an audience of more than 16000 business owners, freelancers and service providers.

Those days, I created them without making them fillable and people started asking me if I could do anything to allow them to pen down their thoughts and answers right onto the PDFs in a digital way.

That was when I started to find ways to do that.

The transformation was amazing. Many of them were able to do the exercises I’ve given them and that brought them quicker results than if they had to download the PDF, find a printer to print and eventually get to work on them.

If you are also creating workbooks, templates and checklists for your audience or to build an audience, I highly recommend that you make them fillable for your audience to take action right away.

One thing for sure is there’s no way to make your PDF fillable in Canva as of writing. But you can make a PDF in Canva first, download it and use other platforms or apps to make your PDF fillable.

There are several ways to do that, and I will cover both free and paid versions here, using my 2025 calendar printable template as an example.

Create The PDF In Canva

With Canva opened, up, create a new design and select or key in your custom size.

Then, set up your design or document with boxes or spaces where you want people to fill in.

Next, click the “Share” button, and in the dropdown menu, select the “Download” button.

In the “File Type” section, select “PDF Standard”.

Then, make sure that you select “Flatten PDF”, or that it’s checked. This is to make sure all fonts you’ve selected for your PDF stay intact and any content, text and element don’t run out of your current layout.

Next, select the purple “Download” button.

Select a folder on your computer to save the PDF.

Make Your PDF Fillable With A Paid APP

The app that I use is Adobe Acrobat Pro. I’ve been using Adobe since 2005 and never left it. You will know why later in this section below.

I highly recommend you to use Adobe not just for making PDFs fillable, you can also edit a PDF even if it’s flattened.

It has a technology that recognizes text and convert them to textboxes for you to change the text on the fly.

Best of all, with Cyber Monday, it’s now running up to a massive 70% discount. You don’t just get Acrobat Pro though, it also comes with Photoshop, Illustrator and all other Creative Cloud Apps.

This is the best deal ever I’ve seen, so grab it here to take advantage of this deal. You have this till 8 December 2024.

Once you have downloaded Acrobat Pro, use it to open the PDF.

I’ve made my default app to be Acrobat Pro, so if I double-clicked on any PDF, it will open up in Acrobat.

Next, select “All tools” and a dropdown of many features will appear.

Select “Prepare a form”.

Acrobat will detect for spaces in your file and automatically convert them to fillable sections.

It’s really powerful and makes things so easy for you.

Imagine creating a calendar template like what I’m doing, there are at least 365 empty spaces to convert to fillable boxes. Instead of making them fillable one at a time, I only have to check if there are any spaces left out and make them fillable.

This would take you a fraction of your time compared to doing so manually.

Once done, all you have to do is to select “File” and “Save” to save the same PDF with fillable areas.

Make Your PDF Fillable With A Free APP

If you don’t wish to invest in Acrobat Pro just yet, I’d recommend PDFescape. It’s always free as mentioned on their website at time of writing.

First go to your internet browser and visit pdfescape.com.

Select the button that says “Free Online”.

In the new page, click on “Upload PDF to PDFescape”.

Then, select “Choose file” to select your PDF file from your computer to upload it to the app.

You will enter a section showing your PDF on the right.

Go to the left side, select the “Form Field” button.

In the pop-up under the “Type” section, select “Text”.

And click on the “Select” button.

Next, your cursor will turn into a rectangle.

Bring it to your PDF where you’d like a space to be fillable by moving your mouse or direct it with your trackpad.

Then, draw a box with your cursor by clicking and dragging the rectangle cursor.

You will see a box drawn on your PDF.

Let go of your mouse, and you’ll have a fillable box created.

Do the same for all areas that need a fillable area.

Once done, go to the vertical menu bar on the left and select the “Download” button to save your fillable PDF file to your computer.

Go to the location where you saved the PDF file, open it up to check and you will see the fillable spaces you’ve created.