Use Google chrome to View Pdf files, Fill Out Forms and Save Web Pages As PDF
You first need to check if you have enabled PDF Viewer in Chrome. Head to the Omnibox and type:
chrome://plugins
chrome://plugins
If you see ‘Disable’ as a link under Chrome PDF Viewer, it’s already switched on. If you see ‘Enable’, click that and restart the browser.
The Chrome PDF Viewer can be used to read any PDF, whether online or stored locally. For local files, open a new tab and drag-and-drop the document.
With that out of the way, let’s see what you can do with this handy utility.
Fill Out Forms And Save Them
If you need to fill out a PDF form — which most government documents require you to — it can be done easily through the Chrome PDF Viewer. Not only is it faster, but it also looks more professional.
Open the fillable form in Chrome and just start typing. It really is as simple as that. Chrome smartly detects spaces to fill out and lets you type there. However, this isn’t a foolproof method and there are some forms Chrome can’t detect. For example, I tried it with an Indian railway form where half the text was in Hindi and it didn’t work.
Still, the bigger problem is saving the form after you are done. If you hit the “Save” button in the toolbar, it will just save the blank original PDF without the text you entered. To save the text, you need to again hit the Print option, choose ‘Save as PDF’ in the Destination and click Save to download the filled out form.
Save Web Pages As PDF
The Chrome PDF Viewer can also be used to save any web page as a PDF file for you to read later or offline.
Hit Ctrl+P (or Cmd+P on a Mac) to bring up the Print options. Choose the pages you want, layout (portrait/landscape), whether you want to include headers, footers, background colours and images, and set the margin. The ability to set custom margins is a pretty cool feature here.
Once you’re done, again, use the Print -> Save as PDF -> Save method to download the file to your hard drive.