The fields Bindery writes are standard AcroForm fields — text, multi-line, checkbox and comb, plus dropdowns you add yourself — named from their labels, with the label as each field’s tooltip, so the form fills in Acrobat, Preview, every browser and Bindery’s Fill forms, and Fill from spreadsheet can map columns to them. Detected fields sit on the lines and boxes the form already prints, without a second border. Two honest limits. Detection works on digital forms — exported from Word or LibreOffice, or built in a form designer — and scanned forms are not supported yet, so on a scan draw the fields by hand. And radio groups are not detected: a Yes / No pair comes in as two checkboxes. The template never leaves your device.
How it works
- Press Detect fields in Create form — drop the flat form first, and fields are proposed from its lines, boxes and labels
- Review them on the page board: rename, change the kind, delete, or draw a missed field by hand
- Download the fillable PDF, then test it in Fill forms before sending it out
Questions people ask
Which kinds of field does it find?
Text fields on answer lines, leaders and empty boxes or table cells; multi-line text fields in tall boxes; checkboxes from small squares and ☐ glyphs; and comb fields from rows of equal boxes, written with one character per box and a maximum length to match. Radio groups and dropdowns are not detected: a Yes / No pair comes in as separate checkboxes, and dropdowns can be added in Create form. A signature line comes in as an ordinary text field — switch it off in the review and sign with Sign.
How accurate is it?
It is a set of rules, not a trained model, and it does best on clean forms exported from office software. Expect to fix a few things: a decorative rule or table border proposed as a field, a blank with no line or box missed, a label on a two-column layout paired with the wrong blank. The review shows each field with the label it was named from, so these are quick to spot, and nothing is written until you have checked the list.
Is the form uploaded, and is it free?
No upload: detection, review and writing all run in your browser. Create form is part of the free plan — three completed jobs per UTC day, files up to 25 MB, and a small “Made with Bindery” watermark on free PDF exports that Pro removes.