Quick Start
- Import a form. Tap ＋ in the library, pick the blank referral PDF, give it a name.
- Place the fields. Open the template → Edit Template. Tap the page where an answer belongs, stretch the box to fit, and Tab through the field names. Set the type — text, patient or exam details, referral date, signature, or your practitioner details; the patient, exam, and practitioner types name themselves.
- Add yourself once. In Settings → Practitioner Profiles, enter your details and sign. Practitioner and signature fields fill themselves on every form afterwards.
- Fill it. Open the template → Fill Form. Tab between fields, tick printed boxes and circle items with the tools, add a comment if needed — and, for IRIS users, pull a patient's demographics and exam findings straight from a shared exam PDF. The live preview shows exactly what will print.
- Send it. The blue Share, Save, and Print buttons produce the finished PDF, named
Patient – Template – Date.pdf. Done — fill the same form in seconds next time.
User Manual
The Library
The library is the home screen — a grid of your templates.
- Import a form: tap ＋ (top right), pick a PDF, give it a name and optional category.
- Search: the search field in the centre of the top bar matches template names and categories.
- Arrange: the ↑↓ button chooses the order — Recently Modified, Name, or Recently Added.
- Template actions: long-press a card for Edit Details, Duplicate, or Delete.
- Reopen Exported PDF (top left): open a PDF previously exported by Form Filler to continue or correct it.
- Settings (gear): profiles, backup, About, and Reset App.
Setting up a template (the editor)
- Tap an empty spot on the page to add a field. Drag to move it; drag the corner handles to resize — the three blue handles adjust width only (fields usually share one height), and the red bottom-left handle adjusts width and height.
- Each box shows its field name in grey, rendered at the exact size, font, and alignment your entries will print at, so you can perfect alignment without leaving the editor.
- Naming flows fast: a new field's name arrives selected (just type), and Tab / Shift-Tab in the name box hops to the next / previous field with its name selected too.
- Two fingers pan and zoom the page. Nudge arrows move the selected field one point at a time.
- The inspector lists fields in fill order — tap one to edit its name, type, font, size, alignment, and colour; use Reorder to change fill order. The type menu is grouped into General, Patient, Exam Findings, and Referring Clinic, and choosing a patient, exam, practitioner, signature, or referral-date type names the field for you (there's no name to type).
Field types
Choosing a patient, exam, practitioner, signature, or referral-date type names the field for you — there's nothing to type. The type menu groups them as General, Patient, Exam Findings, and Referring Clinic.
| Type | Behaviour |
|---|---|
| Single-line Text | One line, auto-shrinks to fit the box |
| Multi-line Text | Wraps and supports carriage returns; fills its box white behind your answer (hides ruled lines — toggleable per field) |
| Static Text | Fixed text printed on every copy (e.g. your provider number) |
| Referral Date | Starts on today's date (e.g. 03 AUG 2026); editable in the form if you need a different date |
| Patient Name | Single-line text that also names the exported file. Place it on more than one page and every copy shows the same name. |
| Patient DOB, Patient Address, Healthcare #, Patient Phone | Patient details you type — or fill automatically from an imported exam PDF. A phone typed as ten digits formats to (###) ###-####. |
| Refraction, Visual Acuity, Keratometry, IOP — each per eye (OD / OS) | Exam findings you type — or fill automatically from an imported exam PDF |
| Signature | Auto-stamps the selected profile's signature, like the other practitioner fields |
| Doctor Name, Office Address, Office Fax, Office Phone, Email, Practitioner ID | Auto-filled from your practitioner profile; never typed per form |
There's no separate Date or Checkbox type: type dates as text (or use Referral Date and Patient DOB), and tick boxes already printed on the form with the Checkmark tool while filling.
Practitioner profiles
Enter your own details once in Settings → Practitioner Profiles — doctor name, office address, fax, phone, email, and practitioner ID. Place the matching field types on your templates and they fill themselves on every form. You can keep several profiles (multiple practitioners, multiple locations); when a template uses practitioner fields and more than one profile exists, a picker at the top of the fill form chooses which one to use. Each profile can have its own name separate from the doctor name — so one doctor practising at two locations keeps, say, "Dr Smith — Downtown" and "Dr Smith — Northside". Profiles are included in library backups.
Your signature
Each practitioner profile carries its own signature: open a profile and draw the signature with a finger or Apple Pencil, or import a PNG/JPEG (a PNG with a transparent background works best). Place Signature fields on any template that needs signing and they stamp themselves automatically from the selected profile — no per-form step, and switching profile switches the signature. Signatures live inside the profiles, so they're included in library backups automatically.
Filling a form
- Keyboard flow: Tab (or the ▲/▼ toolbar buttons) moves between fields. In multi-line fields, Return starts a new line and Tab still moves on. Nothing is auto-capitalised.
- Tap the preview to jump to a field and focus its box.
- Checkmark, circle, and comment tools: switch from Type to Checkmark (tap the form to stamp a tick — no template field needed), Circle (drag to ring an item), or Comment (tap or drag out a box, then type a one-off note). Comments support multiple lines with their own text size, bold, black border, and white background; with the Comment tool active, tap a comment to edit it, drag to move it, and use its corner dot to resize.
- Drafts: entries autosave every few seconds to an encrypted draft that never leaves the iPad. Leave the screen — even to adjust the template — and you'll be offered Resume when you return. Clear form erases the entries and the draft.
Importing patient details (IRIS)
If you use the IRIS EMR, Form Filler can read a patient's exam PDF and fill the patient and exam fields for you — no retyping.
- Set up once: place any Patient fields (Name, DOB, Address, Healthcare #, Phone) and Exam Findings fields (Refraction, Visual Acuity, Keratometry, IOP — each per eye) on your template.
- Bring the PDF in: from IRIS, tap Share and choose Form Filler — or, on the fill screen, tap Patient Details and pick the PDF.
- Review: Form Filler reads the file entirely on the device and shows the extracted values, grouped into Patient and Exam Findings and tidied for a referral form — name as
LAST, First, date of birth asDD MON YYYY, health number as#####-####, and so on. Check them, edit anything, then tap Apply to Form.
Only the fields your template actually has get filled. The shared PDF is read in memory and its copy deleted straight away — nothing is stored except the values you apply, which are treated exactly like anything you type. Reading is tuned to IRIS's exam export, and the review step lets you catch anything unusual before it lands on a form.
Exporting
The blue buttons at the top right: Share (AirDrop, EMR, email…), Save (to the Files app), and Print. The file is named Patient Name – Template – Date.pdf (the patient segment appears when the form has a Patient Name field).
Reopening an exported PDF
Every PDF Form Filler exports invisibly carries its own entry data. Reopen Exported PDF (library, top left) opens such a file straight back into the fill screen with every value, date, tick, circle, and comment restored — useful for "same referral as last year" or fixing a typo after the fact. Reopening also saves the restored entries to the on-device draft immediately, so you can hop out and resume without losing anything.
Notes: only PDFs exported by Form Filler can be reopened, and the matching template must still be in your library; another app that rewrites the PDF may strip the hidden data; the data inside is the same information visible on the page — sharing the PDF shares no more than what's printed on it.
Sharing a template with a colleague
- Share Template… (from a template's screen) produces a normal, viewable PDF of the blank form that invisibly carries the template's field layout. A colleague running Form Filler just uses ＋ Import PDF on it: the app recognises it and offers Import Template, recreating the template ready to fill. Shared templates never include your practitioner profiles or signatures.
- Share Blank PDF… — the original imported PDF, byte-for-byte untouched.
Backup & restore
Settings → Back Up Library… writes one file containing every template — field layouts and the original PDFs — plus your practitioner profiles and signatures, and can rebuild everything from scratch on a new iPad or after a reset. Backups contain no patient data. Restore from Backup… only ever adds: anything already in the library is left untouched.
Reset App
Settings → Reset App… permanently erases all templates, imported PDFs, profiles, signatures, and the saved fill draft. Back up first.
Privacy Policy
Last updated: 3 August 2026
Form Filler is an iPad app for templating and filling PDF referral forms. It is designed so that your data — and in particular your patients' data — stays under your control on your device.
The short version
- Form Filler makes no network connections. Nothing you do in the app is transmitted anywhere.
- There are no accounts, no analytics, no tracking, and no third-party services.
- Patient information exists only in three places, all controlled by you: the current fill session, an encrypted draft on the device, and the PDF files you explicitly export.
What the app stores
Templates (the imported blank forms and their field layouts) are stored in the app's private storage on your iPad. Templates contain no patient information. They are included in normal device backups, and in any library backup file you choose to create.
Fill-session drafts. While you fill a form, your entries are automatically saved to a single draft so they survive leaving the screen or quitting the app. This draft is encrypted (AES-GCM) with a key held in the device Keychain, restricted to this device only; excluded from iCloud and computer backups — it can never leave the iPad; and deleted when you use Clear form, choose Start Fresh at the resume prompt, or Reset App.
Imported patient PDFs. When you share a patient's exam PDF into Form Filler (IRIS users), it is read entirely on the device and the temporary copy is deleted immediately after the details are extracted. The extracted values live only in the current fill session — and its encrypted draft — once you apply them, exactly like values you type, and are never sent anywhere.
Exported PDFs. A PDF you export contains the completed form, and additionally carries an invisible copy of the entry data so the app can reopen it for editing later. This embedded data contains the same information that is visibly printed on the form — no more — so sharing the PDF discloses nothing beyond the document itself. Where you send exported PDFs, and how long you keep them, is entirely up to you.
Practitioner profiles. Your own professional details (name, office address, fax, phone, email, practitioner ID) and each profile's signature image are stored on the device to auto-fill practitioner and signature fields on forms, and are included in library backups. They are your information, not patient data; a signature appears on a form only when the template has a signature field.
Library backups. A backup file you create from Settings contains your templates, their blank PDFs, your signature images, and your practitioner profiles — never patient data or drafts.
What the app never does
- It never modifies your original imported PDFs.
- It never sends data over the network.
- It never stores patient information outside the encrypted draft and the PDFs you export.
- It never shares anything with third parties.
Your responsibilities
Exported PDFs contain patient health information. Handle them according to your professional and legal obligations (e.g. your local health-privacy legislation). Form Filler's job is to ensure the only copies that exist are the ones you deliberately create.
Contact
Questions, problems, or suggestions — email xbalsoftware@gmail.com.