AcroForm Support
Save time by leveraging AcroForms to generate your document's fields automatically.
2026-06-30
What is AcroForm support?
Many PDFs are authored as fillable forms: text boxes, checkboxes, dropdowns, and signature areas defined inside the PDF itself using the AcroForm standard (common in government, HR, and banking documents).
Previously, turning one of these PDFs into a Verdocs template meant manually placing every field in the template builder—or rewriting the document with handlebars-style {\{...\}\} tags.
With AcroForm support, Verdocs inspects the PDF on upload, maps each detected widget to a Verdocs field type, and creates the corresponding template fields automatically. Detected fields flow through the same role-and-field pipeline used by Dynamic Tagging, so once the template is built you send envelopes the same way you always have.
How it works
When you attach a PDF to a template:
- Verdocs checks whether the PDF contains Verdocs text tags.
- If no text tags are found and your organization has opted in, Verdocs scans for AcroForm widgets.
- Each widget is mapped to a Verdocs field type (for example textbox, checkbox, dropdown, date, initial, or signature) based on the PDF field type and name.
- A single signer role—Recipient—is created and all detected fields are assigned to it. AcroForm PDFs do not encode which signer owns which widget, so Verdocs uses one role by default. You can rename or split roles afterward in the template builder or via the API.
- Non-signing controls such as Reset and Print buttons are ignored.
If detection fails for any reason, the upload still succeeds—the document is stored without auto-generated fields.
Supported field types
Verdocs maps common AcroForm widget types to signing fields:
| AcroForm widget | Verdocs field |
|---|---|
Text (Tx) | Textbox (multiline when the PDF flag is set) |
| Text with date-style naming | Date |
| Text with signature-style naming | Signature |
| Text with initial-style naming | Initial |
Button (Btn, checkbox) | Checkbox |
Button (Btn, radio) | Radio |
Choice (Ch) | Dropdown |
Signature (Sig) | Signature |
Field labels are derived from the PDF's internal field names, so deeply nested government-form names are cleaned up into readable placeholders.
How to enable it
AcroForm auto-detection is opt-in per organization. It is controlled by the process_acroforms pipeline setting and is false** by default** for new organizations.
Organization admins can enable it with:
PATCH /organizations/{organization_id}/pipeline-settings
{
"process_acroforms": true
}AcroForm detection is independent of text-tag processing (process_tags). It runs only when no Verdocs text tags are present on the PDF, so you can use Dynamic Tagging and AcroForm detection in the same account without them conflicting.
For full details on pipeline settings—including where they apply and recommended configurations—see the Organization pipeline settings guide (link when published).
When to use AcroForm vs Dynamic Tagging
| Approach | Best for |
|---|---|
| AcroForm auto-detection | PDFs that already exist as fillable forms; quick onboarding of standard documents like I-9 or signature cards |
| Dynamic Tagging | Server-generated PDFs and DOCX files where you control the source and embed {\{...\}\} tags; multi-signer workflows with explicit role names in the document |
You do not need to modify the source PDF to use AcroForm support—upload the file as-is. If you need multiple signers with distinct roles defined in the document itself, Dynamic Tagging remains the better fit.
Related documentation
- Tagging Dynamic Documents — embed tags for programmatic field placement
- Attach a document to a template
- Send an envelope without a template — AcroForm detection also applies when documents are attached directly to an envelope