CourtPDF

Flatten a PDF for Court Filings

Flattening locks in form fields, annotations, and digital layers so your filing prints exactly the way you see it on screen. The Flatten PDF tool runs locally so sensitive exhibits stay offline.

Jump straight to flattening: Open the Flatten PDF tool and load your form or scanned packet.

What is flattening?

  • Mode A (form flattening) writes the appearance of each form field onto the page and strips the interactive widgets.
  • Mode B (visual flattening) renders each page to an image and rebuilds the PDF so nothing remains editable.
  • Both options remove annotation layers when you check “Remove links/annotations.”

Why courts reject dynamic PDFs

Courts and e-filing systems commonly reject PDFs that still contain:

  • Editable text fields (e.g., fillable Judicial Council forms).
  • Comment or sticky-note annotations from Adobe Acrobat.
  • Layers added by scanning apps that obscure timestamps or signatures.

Flattening stops the clerk from seeing “Please fill out this field” pop-ups or blank signature boxes.

How to verify it’s flattened

  1. Re-open the downloaded PDF in your viewer and try clicking where form fields used to be—your cursor should not change.
  2. Use the viewer’s annotation pane; it should show zero comments or form widgets.
  3. If you chose visual flattening, zoom to 200% to confirm the text is baked into the page.
  4. For extra assurance, print to paper and scan a single page; it should look identical.

Choosing the right mode in CourtPDF

  • Start with Keep text selectable (faster) for official court forms—text stays copyable for judges.
  • Switch to Force visual flatten (always works) when forms are password protected or include complex stamps.
  • Toggle “Remove links/annotations” to scrub hyperlinks, sticky notes, or highlight layers.

Works great with