Fill Out Forms Paperlessly with Notability and iOS Markup on an iPad


Hi, everyone!  This is Lara Hammock from the Marble Jar channel and in today's video, I'll share how I use Markup and Notability to fill out forms paperlessly. 
This is hardly a revelation, it is so straightforward, but I stubbornly refuse to fill out paper forms anymore.  You get a form by email, print it out, fill it in by hand, and then what?  Scan it back in in order to email it?  No.  Instead, I use either iOS's built in Mark-up tool or Notability (which is my favorite handwriting integrated app).  I fill out forms and then email them back without touching a printer or a piece of paper.  If needed, of course you can choose to print them from Notability.  

Markup Tool

Just a quick note about when I use the built in Mark-up tool.  This is a new iOS tool for PDF and photo markup and is really coming along!  You can access it by either pressing on an attachment to get additional options and choosing Markup or by opening the document and choosing the markup icon which looks like a toolbox.  I like to use it for quick and simple edits -- like a photo where I highlight a word or a form that only requires my name and signature.  Just make your edits and it saves your edited document to a reply email, which makes it quick and easy to respond.  The problem is that it is limited -- for example it doesn't have an eraser tool, just an undo option and once your edits are saved, you can't undo them.  So if I'm filling out a longer form or want to save the form to access later, I use Notability.

Notability

To do this, open the PDF attachment from your email, choose the share option and then choose Import with Notability.  You can customize which apps come up for sharing and the order in which they appear if you scroll all the way to the right and choose More.  There are a bunch of things that I like about using Notability, but forms are fairly simple and straightforward.  I use black ink, choose a thin pen and fill it out.  I can erase (without affecting the original PDF or image), highlight, or cut and move my edits.  Then, I can save the form just in case I need to revisit it later -- more on this in a second.  I can change the title to something more descriptive and this title now becomes the name of the PDF that I will ultimately send.  Then I can email it to a recipient or attach it to the response to the original email.  Emailing to a recipient is easy, but you'll have to type in their email address.  Choose share, then email -- fill out your mail message and done.  

Attach to Reply Email

But most of the time, I'd rather attach the filled out form as a reply to the original message to preserve the context.  In order to attach this to your email reply, I like to use iCloud Drive. You can also use Google Drive or a couple of other cloud storage services, but they are clunkier for this purpose.  iCloud Drive is different from iCloud backup. iCloud backup is a service that allows you to sync your Notability notes from your iPad to your other Apple devices -- I use this too.  But iCloud Drive is basically storage that you can access through innate apps like Mail.  You may have to check to see if the iCloud Drive app is installed on your iPad, but I'm pretty sure it was installed as part of an iOS update.  If you open up this hidden app, you can create or delete folders.  You can see I've added one for Notability.  Okay this function is a little hidden in Notability, so bear with me -- within Notability, choose the Share button, now choose Other Apps, and then hit the Share Note button.  Now choose Add to iCloud Drive -- I'm going to put this PDF in the Notability folder that I created. Okay -- now go back into the emalil app and reply to the original message.  Once you are in the message, you can choose to attach a file.  Find your file and now it's attached!  

Save for later

Notability has organizes notes by first Divider and then by Subject -- like a giant school notebook.  I have a Divider called Home Notes and I keep a Subject called Forms to house all of the forms that I fill out.  Some of the forms are temporary -- like these forms that I filled out for our Japan trip earlier this year.  Now that the trip is over, I can delete them, but I wanted to keep them for a little while just in case I needed to make changes and resubmit -- it would be annoying to have to do all of that work over again if I didn't have to!  Some of my notes stay in this folder permanently.  For example, we use a mail away prescription service and I have to fill out the same form for each person every time I place a new order.  So I keep a template of those forms ready.  That way I only have to change the date and potentially the prescribing doctor's name.  Then I can print it out, stick it in an envelope with the prescription sheet, and done!

Stylus

Just a quick note on styluses.  I got an Apple Pencil for Xmas last year since I've been trying to create more visual art on the iPad, but you definitely don't need anything sophisticated to make use of Notability's handwriting function.  In fact, my favorite stylus up until then was this capacitive stylus which is now $7.50 as an Amazon add-on.  I also have an iPad case that has a loop for a stylus since I use it frequently.
Let me know what you think!  Comments are always appreciated and thanks for watching!

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