Adobe Fill & Sign – Easy PDF Form Filler

While using Adobe Acrobat on my iPad recently, I noticed under the home icon, a tab called “Fill & Sign.” When tapping on it, the “free Adobe Fill & Sign app” is offered to turn digital files or paper documents into forms you can fill, sign and send electronically. This short video by Adobe shows the app in use on a Mac. You can learn more about the app here.

Although the app is free, it appears one needs the Adobe Cloud service to get the use out of the app. The service has a cost of a about 15$ per month and includes Acrobat Pro DC that allows you to manipulate, edit, read, mark up, OCR and more your PDFs.

The app allows you to fill in forms, including one’s that you take a picture of to send your completed form to others. It may be necessary to import certain electronic forms from another app such as Word or Pages. Adobe’s Help page provides details about the process of using the feature in Acrobat and adding information to your profile.

Once the information such as name, address, email, and phone number is added, you can easily call it up and use it to fill in parts of forms.

You can add other notations like “x”, dots, check marks, circles, etc. to forms.

You can even add a custom signature that you make using your mouse and apply it to the form.

The How-To Guide describes the process as follows:

1. Within Acrobat, open a PDF file or click on the Create PDF tool in the right pane to convert your document to PDF.
2. Click on the Fill & Sign tool in the right pane.
3. Click on the text insertion tool in the toolbar at the top of the page, and then type on your form. Use the pop-up menu to change type size or save your data to use it again in the future, if desired.
4. Click Sign in the toolbar at the top of the page.
5. Draw or type your signature, or use an image.
6. Click Apply and place the signature on your form.
7. Click Send & Track in the right pane to send your form to others and get notified when recipients view it.

The key features described by the developer include:

– Scan paper forms with your camera or open a file from email
– Import files from your favorite cloud storage provider
– Tap to enter text or checkmarks in form fields
– Fill forms faster with reusable text from your autofill collection
– Easily create your signature with your finger or a stylus
– Apply your signature or initials to documents
– Save forms and send to others via email
– Export completed forms and store in the cloud

So, if you are looking for a way to expand the use of Adobe Acrobat DC and to electronically deal with forms, this app may provide you and your business a good option.

 

 

BusyCal – Calendar

BusyCal is a useful and powerful calendar app for working with events and to dos. The app works with iCloud, Google Calendar, Exchange, Office 365 and other CalDAV Servers. This helps with coordinating and syncing all the various calendars you may have into one place.

There are different calendar views and you can even see the upcoming weather. You can use pinch gestures to zoom in and out of weeks.

To Do items are also displayed in the calendar and will remain until completed. You can sort the items in various ways like date, priority, calendar, etc. The app can even sync with Reminders on your iOS or Mac.

If you need help with the app, check out the help page.

All kinds of personalization is available to make this app a nice way to unify all your different schedules into one place. Your productivity can be greatly improved using BusyCal.

 

NotesPlus – iPhone Support

Notes Plus has been updated to version 5.0. Now, the app works with the iPhone too.

If you are not familiar with this note taking app and are looking for a way to capture your written notes electronically, you should check out Notes Plus.

Not only can you write notes, you can draw shapes that are recognized and turned into vector graphic like sharp images.

Handwriting recognition is also included. That means, when you write out your notes by hand, you can convert them to text and send that to other apps.

If you need to mark up PDFs, this app can handle that too.

This note taking app has it all, handwriting recognition, shape detection, palm rejection, smooth inking, modifiable papers, and more.

To learn more about Notes Plus, watch the video below which shows a slightly older version of the app.

OmniPlan 3 Updates and Bug Fixes

OmniPlan project manager allows for planning projects including setting up group tasks and managing resources.

The most recent update includes the following changes:

• Microsoft Project Import — Fixed a regression in our Microsoft Project import tool that could cause some .mpp files to fail to import.
• Scheduling — “Resources Work Independently” once again correctly respects earliest resource availability.
• Stability — Fixed a bug that could cause OmniPlan to crash when opening a file with external dependencies.
• Stability — Fixed a crash that could occur when attempting to undo leveling.

The app is described by the developer as follows:

OmniPlan is designed to help you visualize, maintain, and simplify your projects. Break down tasks, optimize the required resources, and monitor your entire plan—all at a glance. Visualize your project’s tasks in a Gantt chart or Network diagram. Automatically sync projects across multiple personal devices or collaborate with your colleagues and share every detail. Run Monte Carlo simulations to forecast milestone completion dates with varying levels of confidence. OmniPlan helps you manage projects that are as simple or complex as you need them to be—without the complexity.

If you are looking for an app to help you visually plan projects and create a timeline of project tasks, OmniPlan is that app.

 

OneNote – HUGE Update

OneNote, Microsoft’s answer to a note capture and planning app, has been redesigned and updated to version 16.

The biggest noticeable improvement is to the layout. The tabs and sections have moved from the top to the side.  You can choose from various notebooks quite easily on the far left side which stays hidden until you are ready to use it.

OneNote has even made it possible to import your Evernote files to OneNote using a “preview” version of an importer. Basically, you download the importer and run the installed app.

The collaboration feature to allow you to invite people to share and work on a Notebook is a powerful tool.

Using this app, you can sync, capture, organize and plan from any device you can run OneNote from.

Apple Store App

The Apple Store app keeps getting better. Whether you want to order a new device, check on the status of an order, book a genius appointment or get reviews of products, Apple has made this app simple and efficient. It works with your iOS devices and Apple Watch to help you with a personal shopping experience.

If you are in an Apple Store you can scan an item to check the price or purchase it. If you need to look back on orders, you can pull up your history of purchases as well. If you search for upcoming workshops to learn skills with various Apple apps too.

Download the Apple Store app to order, review and keep up with your Apple purchases.

Notes Plus Updated

Notes Plus continues to be the go to app for handwriting notes or jotting drawings to get my ideas down quickly. The app was recently updated to improve or fix the following:

User experience improvements and bug fixes:
– Better handle Apple Pencil with small strokes when palm is conflicting with multi-tasking and control center
– Add notebook covers for 2017
– Fix overflowing text bugs in text mode
– Fix crashes with unknown VGA output devices
Update to latest Wacom SDK, now support Wacom’s Bamboo Fineline 3 stylus

If you are looking for a digital app to replicate the hand writing experience with the bonus of searching, text conversion, shape conversion and more, check out Notes Plus.