PDF Forms

Yes. SurveyJS allows you to export forms as PDF documents using SurveyJS PDF Generator.

SurveyJS PDF Generator is a UI component that uses the same SurveyJS JSON schema powering your web form to render a matching PDF version. This means you define your form once and generate both interactive web forms and printable or shareable PDF documents from the same schema.

You can export SurveyJS forms as:

• Editable PDF forms with interactive fillable fields
• Pre-filled PDFs populated with responses collected through SurveyJS web forms

Because PDF Generator and Form Library now also share the same design system based on CSS variables, web and PDF forms stay visually aligned by default. At the same time, PDF layout can still be customized independently to accommodate print and paper-specific requirements. For more details, see the PDF Appearance Customization guide.

Yes. You can automatically populate existing PDF forms with responses collected through SurveyJS web forms.

SurveyJS includes a PDF form-filling plugin that allows you to map SurveyJS form fields to fields of an existing PDF document. Users complete a dynamic web form built with SurveyJS, and their responses are automatically transferred into the corresponding PDF fields.

SurveyJS supports implementations using the pdf-lib and PDF.js third-party libraries. For details and demos, see the Fill PDF Form with Web Form Responses guide.

Yes. SurveyJS supports hybrid paper and digital form data collection, allowing scanned paper forms, photographed forms, and PDFs to be converted into the same structured data format as web form responses.

SurveyJS provides a unified workflow for organizations that collect responses through both digital and paper-based channels. Instead of maintaining separate systems for online and paper forms, you define the form once and process all responses into a single standardized structure.

The process works like this:

• A single SurveyJS JSON schema defines the form structure.
• Respondents complete the form online or on paper.
• Paper forms are scanned or photographed.
• An AI extraction service reads responses from images or PDFs.
• Extracted answers are mapped to SurveyJS schema fields.
• Teams can review and correct extracted data if needed.
• All responses are stored in the same JSON format used by web submissions.

The resulting data object is identical whether the response originated from an online form, scanned paper document, photographed questionnaire, or completed PDF.

The solution is built using the following free, MIT-licensed libraries:

• SurveyJS Form Library – for rendering and validating web forms
• AI Form Response Extractor – for extracting structured responses from scanned or photographed paper forms and PDFs

Unlike traditional OCR tools, SurveyJS AI Form Response Extractor uses a multimodal LLM guided by your SurveyJS schema. Because the system already knows expected field names, answer types, validation rules, and choice options, it can read and extract structured responses more accurately and consistently than generic document recognition systems.

To learn more about extracting responses from scanned paper forms and PDFs with AI, please refer to the Hybrid Paper and Digital Form Data Collection guide.