Download a form response as a PDF

What is in it

The form as a document with the answers filled in, following the PDF layout rather than the screen layout. Uploaded images are rendered inline where the field sits, and attached PDFs are merged into the same file. So a report with four photos and a quote attached comes out as one document rather than five files in an email.

Why that matters

The person who needs this is almost never the person who built the form. An owner, an insurer, a client or a regulator wants a document they can file, not a link to a table they have no account for. One PDF per submission is the format every one of those people already handles.

One response, one file

The PDF covers a single submission rather than the whole set. That is the right unit for the people who receive it: an insurer wants the claim, not the claims register, and a client wants their own inspection, not everybody else's. When you do need the whole set, that is the CSV export, which gives you every response as rows and leaves the files behind.

Signatures and recordings

An inline signature prints as the mark it was drawn as. Recordings cannot print, so the PDF notes that a recording was uploaded rather than pretending otherwise. Plan around that: if a recording is important evidence, the PDF is not the whole record.

It follows the PDF layout

Reordering or hiding a field in the PDF layout changes the response PDF too. That is how you keep internal fields out of a document you send to a client while leaving them in the responses table where you can still see them.

Make it readable before you send the first one

Download one response with photos and an attachment before you build a process around it. Look for three things: a field that reads oddly on paper because its label only made sense on screen, an internal field a client should not see, and a signature block stranded at the top of a page on its own. All three are fixed once in the PDF layout and then every response after it comes out right.

How it works, in three steps

1. Step 1

   Shape the PDF layout once

   Hide internal fields and reorder anything that reads oddly on paper. It applies to every response PDF from then on.

2. Step 2

   Open a response and download it

   Generation runs in a queue, then downloads as a single file.

3. Step 3

   Check a response with attachments

   Download one that has photos and a PDF attached, so you can see the inline rendering and the merge before you rely on it.

The full walkthrough with screenshots is in the guide View, export and manage your responses.

Limits worth knowing

• Recordings cannot be printed. The PDF notes that one was uploaded.
• The PDF follows the PDF layout, including any fields you hid there.
• One response per PDF. There is no combined document for a whole batch.

See it on a finished piece

Rental application form

27 fields

Patient intake form

25 fields

Product order form

16 fields

Questions people ask

Related pages