How to Organize and Design Digital Form Fields in Adobe Acrobat

When you’re making a digital form in Adobe Acrobat, creating the fillable fields doesn’t mean you are finished. A form that looks cluttered, with misaligned, uneven, or poorly designed fields can confuse users and reduce completion rates. Fortunately, Adobe Acrobat includes powerful tools that help you align, space, and style form fields so your digital forms look clean, professional, and easy to use.

This guide walks through the ways exactly how to organize and design form fields neatly using Adobe Acrobat tools, with visual examples to aid you along the way.

Align your fields like a pro

Misaligned fields can be one sign of an amateur form and can also make your form appear visually unappealing. This can be very beneficial with forms that have many fields or if your fields are part of a table gathering lots of data. Acrobat makes alignment simple with a few clicks.

How to align fields:

1. With your PDF form open, enter the prepare form tool.

2. Select the field(s) you want to edit. Holding the Shift key will allow you to select multiple.

3. The top of the prepare form has buttons to allow you to align fields to the left, right, top, bottom, vertically, or horizontally. Right clicking on the fields also presents the options for aligning.

Icons on a dark background labeled "ALIGN," showing six alignment options: left, center, right, bottom, middle, and top.

Dropdown menu showing alignment options like "Align Left," "Align Right," and distribution options, with "Align, Distribute or Center" highlighted.

Here is an example of fields that are not aligned on the left and fields that are aligned on the right:

Three horizontally misaligned text fields labeled "Text field 1," "Text field 2," and "Text field 3" in a light blue color that contains a red symbol.

Three horizontally aligned text fields labeled "Text field 1," "Text field 2," and "Text field 3" in a light blue color that contains a green checkmark.

Distribute spacing evenly between fields

Forms with their fields equally spaced out also helps to create a visually pleasing look for the user and makes them easier to read. Some forms will have many lines of data to input that are stacked in a column or along a row. By using the distribute feature you can ensure that these fields are spaced accordingly to your text. If your form has many fields of the same size, this tool can make the spacing much more accurate and consistent throughout the document.

To distribute fields:

1. Select three or more fields. Holding the Shift key will allow you to select multiple.

2. The top of the prepare form tool has buttons to allow you to Distribute fields evenly. You can choose to distribute them horizontally or vertically. Right clicking on the fields also presents the options for distributing.

Icons on a dark background labeled "DISTRIBUTE," showing two distribution options: vertical or horizontal.

Dropdown menu showing alignment options like "Align Left," "Align Right," and distribution options, with "Align, Distribute or Center" highlighted.

Here is an example of fields that are not distributed equally on the left and fields that are distributed equally on the right:

Two sets of four text fields. Set of four vertically misaligned text fields labeled "Text field 1," "Text field 2," "Text field 3," and "Text field 4" in a light blue color that contains a red symbol. Set of four vertically aligned text fields labeled "Text field 1," "Text field 2," "Text field 3," and "Text field 4" in a light blue color that contains a green checkmark.

Making field sizes match for a clean layout

Fields that are slightly different sizes can make a form feel messy and difficult for the user. Even if fields are aligned and spaced accordingly, having wildly varying sizes can look unprofessional. There are two ways to go about making fields match: you can use the buttons above the prepare form tool section, or you can right click on the fields themselves.

How to match sizes:

1. Select multiple fields.

2. Use the buttons on the right side of the window of the prepare form tool. There you can make all the selected fields have the same measurements. You can match the height, width, or match both height and width.

Icons on a dark background labeled "MATCH SIZE," showing three options: height, width, or both.

You can also:

1.     Select multiple fields.

2.     Right-click on the field you want the others to match and choose one of the three options:

a. Width

b. Height

c. Both

Using these tools to match field sizes along and then organizing them by using the align and distribute tools you can get a very clean looking, professional, and organized form.

Consistent font type, size, and color

A professional form uses one consistent font type, size, and color throughout. Setting these to a certain standard can prevent errors for users, reduce confusion due to any visual impairment, and utilize consistency to keep your user engaged.

To adjust field appearance:

1. Right-click a field → Properties.

2. Go to the Appearance tab.

3. Set:

   • Font (e.g., Helvetica) – Best to use a standard font found on most computers.

   • Font size (Auto or 10–12 pt) – Use a font size that’s suitable for your desired audience.

   • Text color – Best to use a color that will contrast to the background as to not impede readability. Typically all form fields should be set to black.

   • Border color – Typically leave border transparent unless you need special attention drawn to this data field.

   • Fill color – Also typically leave transparent, even making this white can cause the field to cover up anything that’s behind the field. If it needs to be colored in, be sure to use a very light color if your text is dark.

Well-organized form fields don’t just look better, they improve usability, reduce user error, and increase completion rates. By using Adobe Acrobat’s Align, Distribute, Match Size, and Appearance tools, you can transform a basic fillable PDF into a polished, professional digital form.

Have questions or want help with more complicated forms or other graphic design needs? Contact Splash Box Marketing at info@splashbox.com to get started.