Forms

Photo of a form to a digital form

You do not need a scanner. A phone photo of a printed form is enough to rebuild it online, as long as the shot is flat, square on and evenly lit. This page is about getting that shot right, because it decides how much editing you do afterwards.

Create a form with OneCraftHow shot quality changes the result, and the exact file limits

The Build from files button in the form generator, highlighted — Building from a file you already have. PDF, image or text, up to 10 MB, on a paid plan.

The four things that ruin a shot

Angle, shadow, curl and crop. A photo taken at an angle turns straight rows into trapezoids and confuses the column order. Your own shadow across the middle of the page removes a band of text. A page that is not flat curls the text away at the edge, which is where footers and small print live. And a crop that clips the last centimetre loses the declaration, which is usually the part you most needed.

How to take it

Put the page on a flat surface with light coming from the side rather than behind you. Hold the phone parallel to the page, not tilted, and fill the frame with the sheet plus a small margin. One page per photo. If your phone has a document mode that flattens and squares the page, use it, because it does exactly the correction the reader would otherwise have to guess at.

What you can attach

Up to five files per generation, 10 MB each, in PDF, plain text, PNG, JPG, WebP or GIF. A five page form is five photos or one multi page PDF. Attaching files needs a paid plan, so a free account can describe the form in the prompt box but cannot upload the sheet.

Check these two things first

After it generates, look at the required flags and at any grid of tick boxes. Paper marks required fields with a convention the camera does not always see, and a rating grid can come back as separate questions. Both are quick to fix, and both are wrong often enough to be worth checking every time.

How it works, in three steps

Step 1
Shoot flat and square
Page on a table, side light, phone parallel, one page per shot, small margin around the sheet.
Step 2
Attach and describe
Attach the photos and add a line about what must stay and what to drop. The prompt and the photo are used together.
Step 3
Fix the two usual suspects
Check required flags and tick box grids against the paper, then publish.

The full walkthrough with screenshots is in the guide Convert a paper form into a web form.

Limits worth knowing

Attaching a photo is a paid plan feature.
Five files per generation, 10 MB each. PNG, JPG, WebP, GIF, PDF and plain text only.
Handwritten answers on the sheet are not read as data.
Very small print, rotated text and footers are where a photo is weakest.

See it on a finished piece

Patient intake form

25 fields

Gym membership form

15 fields

Volunteer signup form

10 fields

Questions people ask

Does the photo need to be a scan?

No. A flat, square on phone photo in even light reads as well as a scan. Document mode on a phone camera helps because it squares the page for you.

How many pages can I photograph at once?

Up to five files per generation. A longer form is easier as one multi page PDF than as many separate photos.

Why did some questions come back as plain text boxes?

Usually because the label did not say what kind of answer it wanted. Renaming the field to something like "Date of birth" and switching the type takes a few seconds each.

Make your own form

The button opens the generator with this use case already described. Change the wording to match yours, generate, then edit anything you like.

Create a form with OneCraft