If you want to take the audience of your PDF file go beyond reading, create an interactive PDF, add interactive elements to have them engage with.

Table of Contents

What Is an Interactive PDF?

It is a PDF that you can interact with, not just read, for example, there are form fields that you can edit texts in, there are buttons you can hit to email, submit, select, there are links guiding you to an external or external page, there are audio or videos that you can play within the file, there are checkboxes you can make a selection, there are bookmarks guiding you to the wanted section…

pdf form

Method 1. Use The Best Interactive PDF Creator — Adobe Acrobat

Like many others, you have probably heard about Adobe Acrobat, but never installed it for a try, because you don’t want to lock your digital budget to a Adobe subscription. If that’s the case, there is a lot you’ve missing out from this amazing PDF tool. Acrobat makes it fairly easy for everyone to create and edit PDF files like professionals. It creates good-looking files for business, finance, career, edit PDF texts, images, urls and interactive elements with high customizability. It greatly simplifies file collaboration, like fill and sign, review, share.

It is also the best interactive PDF creator, not only because it creates an interactive PDF form automatically by smartly detecting and adding fillable fields to the file, but also because it lets users add any interactive element to the PDF as follow:

  • Add text box
  • Add checkbox
  • Add radio button
  • Add a list box
  • Add dropdown list
  • Add Print, Submit, Clear button
  • Add image filed
  • Add date field
  • Add signature field
  • Bookmark PDF
  • Add hyperlink to PDF or link to a PDF page
  • Add audio and play
  • Add video and play

To create interactive PDF in Acrobat automatically, you can:

  1. Grab a free trial of Adobe Acrobat Pro, install and fire up the app on your machine. Then open the file in Acrobat.
  2. create interactive pdf 1Head to All tools> Prepare a form.create interactive pdf 2
  3. Hit Create form to turn the file into an interactive PDF automatically.create interactive pdf 3
  4. Then add interactive elements, like text field, button, checkbox or others to the PDF. Use the properties panel to customize the interactive elements.create interactive pdf 4
  5. Head to All tools> Add rich media.create interactive pdf 5
  6. Then insert a playable video, or audio to the interactive PDF, according to your need.create interactive pdf 6
  7. Hit Save button.

Method 2. Use Sejda — Online Free

You may not want to create interactive PDF in Acrobat, fortunately, all of today’s web browsers make it very simple to edit PDFs. I love searching and using online tools for work, if you don’t know where to begin, Sejda is my favorite online PDF editor that I regularly get my PDF jobs done before becoming Adobe subscriber.

Sejda.com is free to use, but the free version has limits, I only used this for important and PDF editing jobs, because you can only do 3 tasks per hour for free. It has tools to edit, create, export, protect, compress PDF. It lets users make an interactive PDF by adding fillable form fields like text box, check box, radio button, etc. And the whole process needs to be done manually one by one.

This is how to create interactive PDF online and free in Sejda:

  1. Navigate to sejda.com/pdf-editor in your web browser.
  2. Upload the PDF.create interactive pdf sejda 1
  3. Click Forms or Links, choose an interactive option to add to your PDF.create interactive pdf sejda 2
  4. Also, you can customize the interactive element by changing the properties.create interactive pdf sejda 3
  5. Once created, hit Apply changes.
  6. Download the interactive PDF to your machine.create interactive pdf sejda 4

Method 3. Use Docfly — Online Free

It has review, edit, create, convert and protect tools, it offers the most options on interactive elements, like link, text field, paragraph field, radio button, dropdown button, list field, date field, signature and initials field. But you have only 3 export credit and it processes files very slow.

This is how to make an interactive PDF online and free in DocFly:

  1. Navigate to docfly.com in your web browser, upload the PDF.
  2. create interactive pdf docfly 1Select the file and choose Edit by clicking on “…” icon.create interactive pdf docfly 2
  3. Go Form Creator to add interactive form fields. Or go to Editor to add a link.create interactive pdf online 3
  4. You can also customize the interactive elements by changing the properties.create interactive pdf docfly 3
  5. Save the file.
  6. Head to Export> Download to save the interactive PDF to your machine.create interactive pdf docfly 4

Method 4. Use PDFescape — Online Free

It has the least limits to create an interactive PDF without installing software. You can add link, and form fields to your PDF. Also it lets users annotate and organize pages. However, the free account has upload limits: 10MB/100 pages. Moreover, you don’t have customization tools as many as Sejda or Docfly.

This is how to convert PDF to an interactive PDF form online and free in PDFescape:

  1. Navigate to https://www.pdfescape.com/online-pdf-editor/ in your web browser, upload the PDF.make pdf interactive pdfescape 1
  2. Head to Insert> Form Field or Link, choose an interactive element to add to your PDF.make pdf interactive pdfescape 2
  3. Hit the Download button to save the interactive PDF to your machine.make pdf interactive pdfescape 3

Can We Make an Interactive PDF from Word or PowerPoint?

No!

Though we can add fillable fields in a Word or PowerPoint file in the Microsoft Office suite, when exporting as PDF, all the interactive layers are flattened and become not fillable on the PDF output file. To make the PDF file that you created from an office document, you have to convert it using the form tool in advanced PDF editors like Adobe Acrobat or Foxit, or otherwise, you need to make the file interactive using above online free tools.