ResumeForge Help Documentation

A complete guide to the resume and cover letter builder, from the first line to the PDF.

Last Updated: November 3, 2026

1. Getting Started

1.1 What you need

• A modern browser (Chrome, Edge, Firefox, Safari or Opera) with JavaScript enabled, on a computer, tablet or phone
• Site data allowed for zerodataupload.com, so your resumes are kept between visits
• Your work history, education and skills, or the text of a resume you already have

1.2 How the page is laid out

The pill at the top shows the resume you are working on and whether it is saved. Beside it are Your resumes, which lists every resume you keep, and the switch between Resume and Cover letter. On the right are Undo and Redo, Help and Download. The tabs below choose what the card shows: Write (your details), Design and Check (the review and the job match). On a wide screen the pages are beside the card and stay in view while you scroll; on a phone they are under the Preview tab.

1.3 Your first resume

1. Choose Fill in the example to see every part working, or start typing your own details.
2. Fill in Personal details, a short Summary and your Experience, then Education and Skills.
3. Pick a template under Design.
4. Open Check and go through the red-pencil notes.
5. Choose Download, then PDF.

2. Your Resumes

Keep one version of your resume for each kind of job you apply for, each with its own cover letter, job ad and design. Your resumes lists them with the template and when each was last edited. New blank starts an empty one, New from example a filled example, and Import brings one in (section 14). Beside each resume are Rename (the name only you see), Duplicate and Delete. Click a resume to open it.

3. Personal Details and Photo

Your full name, a headline such as your job title, email, phone, and city and country go at the top of the resume. Add a link adds your LinkedIn, portfolio or GitHub address; it prints without https:// and stays clickable in the PDF. Only web, email and phone addresses become links; anything else is printed as text. Other details holds lines such as date of birth, nationality, notice period or driving licence, where employers expect them.

Add a photo opens a picture from your device. Drag it to move it in the frame, or use the arrow keys, and zoom with the slider, the mouse wheel or plus and minus. Choose a round or square frame, and untick Show on the resume to keep the photo without printing it. Only the cropped picture is kept, without the camera's hidden details such as the place it was taken.

4. Sections and Entries

A new resume has Summary, Experience, Education, Skills and Languages. Add a section adds Projects, Certifications, Awards, Volunteering, Publications, Interests, References or a Custom section with your own heading. Click a section's name to open or close it.

• Move a section by dragging its handle (the dots on its left), with the up and down arrow keys on the handle, or with Move up and Move down in its menu.
• Hide a section or an entry with the eye button: it stays in the editor, crossed through, and is left off the pages and every download.
• A section's menu (the three dots) also has Rename heading, Sort newest first for dated sections, Move to the side column in the two-column templates, and Delete section, which can be undone from the message that follows.
• An entry's menu has Move up, Move down, Duplicate and Delete entry.
• Skills come in groups, such as Tools or Methods, each with an optional name and level; type a skill and press Enter, or paste a list with commas. Languages each have a level from Basic to Native. Interests are a short list. References can be people or one line such as References available on request.

5. Writing the Descriptions

Each job, project or course has a description box. Start a line with a dash (-) for a bullet; a line without one is a paragraph. Wrap words in **two stars** for bold or *one star* for italic, or select them and use the B and I buttons. The bullet button turns the lines you have selected into bullets, or back. Pressing Enter at the end of a bullet starts the next one. The count beside the buttons shows the bullets and words.

Verbs opens eight groups of action verbs: Lead, Build, Improve, Save, Win, Analyse, Communicate and Organise. Click a verb and it goes at the start of the line you are on, replacing a weak opener such as Responsible for or Helped with.

6. Dates

Type dates the way you like: Mar 2021, March 2021, 03/2021, 2021-03, 2021, Mar '21, or in Hindi, such as मार्च 2021. Under each entry a line shows how they will print, in the format you pick under Design: Mar 2021, March 2021, 03/2021, 2021-03 or the year only. Tick I work here now (or Still studying, Ongoing) for something that has not ended; it prints as Present, in the language of the headings. A date ResumeForge cannot read is printed exactly as typed, and the line under the entry says so.

7. Templates and Colours

The Design tab shows the eight templates drawn with your own content (or the example, until you add yours):

• Classic: centred, single column, the safest choice for applicant tracking systems.
• Executive: a strong top rule and quiet section lines, for senior roles.
• Swiss: dates in their own column on a clear grid.
• Sidebar: a coloured column for contact details, skills and languages (two columns).
• Timeline: your roles on a line, newest first.
• Banner: your name on a full-width band of colour.
• Compact: two columns and tight spacing, for a long career on fewer pages.
• Elegant: centred serif type and fine rules, for law, academia and hospitality.

The shield marks the six single-column templates that applicant tracking systems read reliably. Choosing a template also sets its fonts, size and spacing; your colour and your content stay. Pick one of ten colours, or any colour with the colour wheel: a colour too light to read on white is darkened on the page, so headings and links stay readable.

8. Fonts, Size and Spacing

Choose a font for the headings and one for the text from sixteen common fonts, serif and sans serif. Only the fonts installed on this device can be chosen, so the PDF matches the screen. The sliders set the text size (8.5 to 12.5 pt), the line spacing, the space between sections and the page margins (8 to 25 mm). Reset fonts and spacing goes back to the template's own.

When the resume runs over a page, Fit on one page (or on two) tightens the design step by step: the space between sections first, then the line spacing, the margins and the text size, never below 8.75 pt. If it still does not fit, it says so; shorten a few older entries and try again. Undo puts the design back.

9. Paper, Language and Wording

• Paper: A4 or US Letter. The pages, the print and the PDF follow it.
• Dates: the format every date prints in.
• Language of headings: English, Spanish, French, German, Portuguese, Italian or Hindi, for the section headings, the month names, the word for present and the phrases of the cover letter.
• Skills and languages: as a list, as tags, or with levels shown as dots.
• Small icons beside the contact details, and the name and page number at the foot of a resume longer than one page.

10. The Red-Pencil Review

The Check tab marks the pages in red pencil, the way an editor would: a bar beside the line and a numbered circle in the margin, matching a note in the list. Red marks are things to fix, amber ones suggestions to consider, and green ticks what already looks good. Click a note to go to the line in the editor; the line is selected so you can retype it. Clicking a number on the page finds its note in the list (on a phone, it goes straight to the line). Some notes have a button that does the fix, such as Sort by date, Fit on one page or Use Classic. The Marks button above the pages shows or hides the marks; they never print.

The review works by fixed rules. It looks at:

• your name, email, phone, city, headline and a profile link, and the example's phone number and email, if they are still there;
• the summary: missing, under 15 or over 110 words (40 to 90 reads best), I, me or my, and overused phrases such as team player or hard worker;
• each job: a title, an employer, start and end dates (and an end before the start), a description, more than seven lines, lines that start with a duty (Responsible for, Duties included, Worked on, Helped with, Assisted, Involved in and the like), lines over about 38 words, and a job without any number;
• the same opening word on three or more lines, jobs not listed newest first, and gaps of six months or more;
• education, the number of skills (5 to 30), the number of pages, and two-column templates;
• in the cover letter: its length, the part in square brackets, the company and the role named, the greeting, paragraphs that all start with I, and one concrete result.

The review helps you spot lines worth another look; you decide what to change. The badge on the Check tab counts the notes.

11. The Job Match

Under Check, choose Job match and paste the full job ad, then the job title and company, which also go into the cover letter. ResumeForge picks out up to 24 key terms: two-word phrases such as design system, tool names and abbreviations such as Figma or WCAG, and words the ad repeats. Common words, the words every ad uses and the company's own name are left out. The terms appear in two groups, missing and already in your resume, with how often the ad uses each one.

The percentage is the share of the terms your resume uses, weighed by how much the ad stresses each one: over 70% is a strong match, 45% a fair one. The plus button beside a missing term adds it to your Skills; a line in your experience that shows how you used it is better still. Add a term only where it is true for you.

12. The Cover Letter

Switch from Resume to Cover letter at the top. The letter takes your name, contact details and design from the resume, so the two match. Fill in who it is to: the recipient's name and job title, the company, the date (today, if left empty) and the address. Then the subject line (Application for and the job title, if left empty), the greeting (Dear and the name, or Dear Hiring Manager), the letter itself, one paragraph per line, and the closing.

Write a first draft builds four short paragraphs from your resume and the job under Job match: the role and the company with your years of experience and latest employer, your two strongest lines with numbers, why this company draws you with the job's key terms you already have, and a polite close. It leaves one gap in square brackets for something specific about the company. It replaces what is in the letter, after asking; Undo brings your text back.

13. Downloads

Download offers files for the resume or the letter, whichever is open:

• PDF: through the browser's print window. Set the destination to Save as PDF, the margins to Default and the scale to 100, and turn on Background graphics if colours are missing. The PDF matches the pages exactly, with real text and clickable links.
• Word document (.docx): a single column with your headings, bullets, fonts, colour and links, easy to edit; no photo. It carries no author name and is set to remove personal information when saved.
• Plain text (.txt) and Copy as plain text: for job portals that ask you to paste your resume. Markdown (.md): the same with simple marks for headings and bold.

For the resume, cover letter and design together:

• Backup file (.json): everything, photo included, to carry on later or on another device.
• JSON Resume (.json): your content in the open format other resume tools read.

14. Importing a Resume

In Your resumes, choose Import. Choose a file opens a ResumeForge backup, a JSON Resume file, or a plain text or Markdown file of up to 8 MB. Or paste the text of your current resume, copied from Word, a PDF or LinkedIn, and choose Sort into sections. ResumeForge finds the headings it knows (such as Summary, Work experience, Education, Skills, Projects, Certifications, Languages, Awards and Hobbies), your email, phone and LinkedIn, GitHub, Behance or Dribbble address, your name on the first line, and sorts the lines into entries by their dates and bullets. The import becomes a new resume; check each section afterwards, especially the dates.

15. Keyboard Shortcuts

• Ctrl+Z undo and Ctrl+Y redo (outside a text box)
• Ctrl+P save as PDF; Ctrl+S saves at once (the tool also saves as you type)
• Enter at the end of a bullet starts the next bullet
• The up and down arrow keys on a section's handle move the section
• In the photo window, the arrow keys move the photo and plus and minus zoom
• ? the help window; Esc closes a window or a menu
• ← and → move between the tabs

16. What Is Remembered

Your resumes, cover letters, job ads, designs, the photo, the zoom of the pages and whether to show the PDF tip are kept in this browser's storage on this device, so they are there when you come back. That storage is not encrypted, and anyone who uses this browser can open them; nothing is kept on a server. When ResumeForge is open in two tabs, a change in one shows in the other. In Your resumes, Delete everything removes all of it and leaves the rest of the site alone.

17. Troubleshooting

• Nothing is remembered. The browser blocks site data (some private windows do); the pill says Not saved. Use a normal window, or download a backup file.
• Colours or the photo are missing in the PDF. In the print window, open More settings and turn on Background graphics.
• The PDF has an extra blank page, or the text is smaller. Set the margins to Default (or None) and the scale to 100 in the print window, and the paper to the one chosen under Design.
• A date prints exactly as typed. ResumeForge could not read it; type it as Mar 2021, 03/2021 or 2021.
• The resume looks different on another computer. That computer has other fonts. Choose a font both devices have, such as Arial, Georgia or Times New Roman.
• Download does nothing. Some browsers block downloads they did not expect; allow downloads for the site.

18. Support

For questions the FAQ does not answer, use the contact form and say which browser and device you use.