Formatting Text in a PDF

Let’s talk about the elephant in the PDF room. Yes, I mean the default font in fillable form PDFs. Sometimes it’s not right. Maybe it’s different to the other fields (too big, too small or a different family). Or perhaps your text doesn’t fit by one character. Ugh! So annoying.

Most of the time, there is nothing you can do about it unless the creator has switched on Rich Text Formatting for all the fields. Good news, I did. My fillable form PDFs are set up with rich text formatting, which means you can change the font family and size to any other option on your computer.

More good news. It’s super easy, and you don’t need a subscription to use this feature. It’s available in the free Adobe Acrobat Reader.

Watch the video

Follow these steps

1. Click the field you want to change
2. Press Ctrl + E (Windows) or Cmd + E (Mac)
3. The Form Field Text Properties toolbar will pop up, offering limited formatting choices. Select your preferred font family, size or other formatting choices.
4. Save the form after each change.

These changes are permanent updates to the field.