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C
Campbell5EF8
Participating Frequently
March 8, 2022
Answered

Cannot edit Document After Signing with "Fill and Sign" feature.

  • March 8, 2022
  • 2 replies
  • 4134 views

I am writing on behalf of a doctors office. We use adobe Acrobat Pro DC.  We have many forms which our clientel need to sign at different dates however, the documents become locked after signing them once. Is there a way to disable this feature in settings? If not, is there a previous version of Adobe Acrobat Pro that we could revert to that does not cause the document to have editing limitations?

 

We are not worried about having a fancy digital signature authentication. We just want to lay down a digital signature. We considered chopping up the forms by removing pages and signing them separately, however we decided that this would significantly slow down our workflow. We have spent a very good chunk of money setting up a custom signing terminal and it will have been a useless purchase if we cannot edit documents after signing them. Help is greatly appreciated.

 

Below I have linked a couple of our most commonly used forms, in case it is relevant to solving our problem:

    Correct answer sangrover

    Hi,

     

    Once you place a signature/initial via Fill and Sign and save the PDF, we flatten the PDF so that all previous changes become uneditable. Though you can continue to add new changes to the PDF.

     

    The idea is that once you place your signature after filling a form, any other user should not be able to edit data filled by you.

     

    Regards,
    Sandeep Grover

    2 replies

    S
    Adobe Employee
    sangroverCorrect answer
    Adobe Employee
    March 9, 2022

    Hi,

     

    Once you place a signature/initial via Fill and Sign and save the PDF, we flatten the PDF so that all previous changes become uneditable. Though you can continue to add new changes to the PDF.

     

    The idea is that once you place your signature after filling a form, any other user should not be able to edit data filled by you.

     

    Regards,
    Sandeep Grover

    K
    KennyNYC
    Participant
    June 5, 2025

    I don't understand why it's not possible to fill in fields that were not previously filled.  For example, a document that requires multiple approvals, or one where another office has to fill in some additional fields after the form was submitted.  There should be a way to accomodate this without having to print and hand sign documents that have been previously signed.

      C
      Campbell5EF8Author
      Participating Frequently
      March 8, 2022

      Interestingly enough, this issue only occurs on our Windows/Mac computers. The issue does not occur on our iPad when saving documents with signatures however, unfortunately our signing station runs on windows, and not the iPad OS.

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