Turn supported documents into a flattened PDF for easy sharing and consistent viewing across devices.
Flattening converts every interactive object — AcroForm fields, sticky-note comments, highlights, stamps, the visual portion of digital signatures, and Optional Content Group (layer) toggles — into static page content. The result looks identical on screen but cannot be edited, refilled, or selectively shown, which is exactly what you want when a document is "done." The technical mechanism is described in the ISO 32000-2 PDF specification: a widget annotation's appearance stream is drawn directly into the page's content stream, and the underlying annotation and field objects are removed.
| Element | After flatten | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| AcroForm text/checkbox/radio fields | Static text and vector shapes drawn on the page | Values you typed become regular page text; the form is no longer fillable |
| Sticky-note and markup annotations (highlights, underlines, comments) | Baked into the page as vector marks | Reviewers can no longer click to read comment threads |
| Stamps (Approved, Draft, custom image stamps) | Drawn into page content | Stamp appearance preserved; stamp metadata removed |
| Digital signature appearance (the visible block) | Preserved as a static image | The cryptographic signature is invalidated — see signatures FAQ |
| Optional Content Groups (PDF layers) | Currently visible layers locked in; hidden layers discarded | Toggle layers you want kept ON before flattening |
| Hyperlinks (URL annotations) | Removed in most flatteners; text remains | Click-to-open behavior is lost; consider this when sharing reference docs |
| JavaScript actions, calculate scripts | Removed | A "total = sum(line_items)" form becomes the numeric value at flatten time |
| Page text outside form widgets | Unchanged | Selectable, searchable, and OCR-friendly as before |
| Embedded fonts and images | Unchanged | No re-rasterization in xconvert's default mode |
| Document metadata (title, author, keywords) | Preserved | Edit in a PDF tool afterward if needed |
| Operation | What it does | When to use |
|---|---|---|
| Flatten (this page) | Removes interactive objects; redraws their appearance into the page content stream | Final form, archival, pre-print, court e-filing |
| Encrypt / password-protect | Adds password or owner-restrictions; document stays interactive for those who can open it | You want the form fillable but the file restricted |
| Print to PDF | OS reprints the visible PDF as a new PDF | Quick informal flatten; risks font subsetting and quality loss |
| Rasterize to image PDF (PDF to JPG then re-import) | Rasterizes every page to pixels | Maximum lockdown but text becomes unsearchable and file size balloons |
| Compress PDF | Downsamples images, subsets fonts; preserves interactivity | You want a smaller file, not a locked one |
Flatten is the only option that keeps text selectable and searchable while removing all editable form/annotation surface area. Image-based "flattening" — printing every page as a JPG — is what some older guides recommend, but it kills OCR and inflates file size two-to-five times.
Yes — that's the entire point. Flatten removes the AcroForm dictionary and converts every filled value into ordinary page text. The values you typed are preserved visually, but the form is no longer fillable, the data is no longer machine-extractable, and any calculate/format JavaScript stops running. Flatten only after the form is complete and you don't need anyone (including yourself) to edit it again. Keep an unflattened master copy.
No. A digital signature hashes the document at the moment of signing; flatten rewrites the page content streams and removes the signature dictionary, so the hash no longer matches and Acrobat reports the signature as invalid. eZsign's writeup on flattening and e-signatures walks through the mechanism. Sign after flattening, not before — flatten the form first, then route the flat PDF through DocuSign / Adobe Sign / a qualified e-signature provider to obtain a verifiable signature.
Court e-filing systems (Tyler Odyssey, File & ServeXpress, and most state portals) auto-reject submissions with active form fields, unflattened DocuSign overlays, or pages whose signature blocks turn black during the searchable-PDF conversion step. They also need a clean page surface to apply the official file-stamp header. Flattening up front avoids the "Court Response of Failure" bounce and the second-trip refile. The GreenFiling support article lists the failure modes across California, Texas, Illinois, Maryland, Indiana, Nevada, Virginia, and Georgia.
PDF/A (ISO 19005) doesn't ban form fields outright — interactive form widgets are allowed in PDF/A-2 and PDF/A-3 as long as each has an explicit appearance dictionary so the visible result is preserved without external rendering logic. What PDF/A forbids is content that depends on outside resources to render the same way: XFA dynamic forms, embedded JavaScript that changes layout, encryption, transparency in PDF/A-1, and external font references. Flattening is the simplest way to comply because it produces a result that has no dynamic dependencies at all. See the PDF Association's ISO 19005 overview for the conformance levels.
No, by design. Flatten is a one-way operation: the AcroForm dictionary, annotation objects, and Optional Content Groups are physically removed from the file. The visible text remains, but there's no record of where field boundaries were, what the field names were, or which marks were highlights vs underlines. Save an unflattened master copy before flattening if there's any chance you'll need to re-edit. If you've already lost the original, the only "recovery" path is OCR + manual rebuild of the form in Acrobat — equivalent to retyping it.
PDFs with Optional Content Groups — InDesign exports with layer toggles, AutoCAD/Revit drawings with dimension and annotation layers, manuals with per-language layers — keep whichever layers are visible at flatten time and discard the rest. Open the source in Acrobat first, set the layer panel exactly as you want the final to look, then upload. Flatten will lock in that view. The editability of layer toggles is lost, so don't flatten a multi-language master you still need to switch between.
Acrobat's "Save As Optimized → Discard objects → Flatten form fields" does the same content-stream rewrite xconvert does, plus optional cleanup of bookmarks, JavaScript, embedded thumbnails, and document tags. Acrobat also exposes a separate "Print Production → Flatten Transparency" pane that flattens transparency blending for prepress — that's a different operation aimed at print RIPs, not a form-flatten. Print-to-PDF is the cruder fallback: it produces a flat result but re-encodes the page through the OS print pipeline, which can subset fonts differently and increase file size. xconvert's flatten preserves text, fonts, and images byte-for-byte where possible and only rewrites the objects that need to be flattened.
Usually yes, but only modestly. Removing the AcroForm dictionary, annotation objects, and any embedded JavaScript trims a few KB to a few hundred KB depending on how form-heavy the source was. The page content streams grow slightly (because field appearances are now drawn inline), so the net saving is typically 5-15% on form-heavy files and near zero on simple annotated docs. If size is your main goal, run Compress PDF after flattening — that's where the meaningful reduction happens.
Yes — free, no account, no watermark, no page-count cap. Uploads travel over TLS to isolated worker nodes, are processed, and are auto-deleted after a short retention window. xconvert does not retain or share document contents and does not train models on user uploads. For sensitive filings (court, HR, medical), the standard advice still applies: redact before uploading anything to any third-party service.