Adobe Acrobat javascript mouse up even for signature fill & sign

[James28350817uk8s]

I created a form in acrobat for work, and what I am trying to do is a document level javascript, that when you click in the signature box of the form it opens the fill& sign option, so that a person can sign the form. I am needing to avoid the digital signature way of doing it because the company has 60,000 employees, and it is impractical to make them all create a digital signature id etc.

So basically, I need help writing a script that on mouse up event, it will open the signature portion of the fill & sign section of adobe. This form is just so that when a person is qualified or being requalified on a machine, it gets filled out and then sent to their personel file. Does that make any sense?

I tried to go to the event tab in adobe in the properties section of the form field, and there is no option to have adobe open what I need on the mouse up even.

[Thom Parker · Accepted solution]

The way to do this is to run the menu item for fill & sign, which is "OpenApp_FillSignApp".

Here's the line of code

app.execMenuItem("OpenApp_FillSignApp");

However, this menu item is blocked, along with many others for security reasons.

The code will only work under special circumstances.

1. Run from a Privileged context.

2. If the menu item is white listed on the particular computer.

[James28350817uk8s]

Thank you so much for that.  These forms are on our internal server at work.  It just so we can eliminate so much paper waste is all.  I will give that a try, and see how it works.  I have to execute it when user clicks in the signature block.  With us having so many employees, making digital certificates for each of them isnt a plausible option.  If I have any more questions, mind of I respond to this message back to you?

[Thom Parker]

Of course. Post away!!

[James28350817uk8s]

Morning Thom,

I tried what you mentioned, and either I am doing something wrong, or I am not sure.  All I am wanting my form to do, is when we click in the signature box, is have adobe open up the fill and sign option, so that the employee can just sign their name and it will fill it in, without having to make a digital certificate or any of that mess.

Where I work, all our forms and things are saved on our internal servers, and we pull them as needed.  So this qualification form would be listed on our server, user would click on the form, it opens in Reader, they need to be able to click in the signature field after having filled out the form, and the fill and sign option should come up.  Once that is done, they can either submit the form, (which would be emailed to appropreiate parties) or print the form itself.  When I put the code in you showed me, it doesnt open that fill and sign option, it gives me an error.  So I am betting either I am doing somethingn wrong, or it wont work in my environment.  Any help would be greatly appreciated.

Man sure wish we used php or something, it would be so much easier.

[Thom Parker]

This is all very confusing stuff (signatures), and I didn't really answer your real question. I believe you want a method that presents the user with a signature box, that when clicked, provides the user with the tool they need to apply a wet signature. It's not that this doesn't exist, just not in a universal way. Or in some easy user friendly format, for PDF forms. 

Part of the complexity and confusion is the signature form field. This field type has always been misleading. On the desktop Acrobat it can only be used to apply a digital certificate. But the same field is also used to apply a wet signature (ink) on mobile viewers. So the usage model is important.  Basically, unless you need a digital certificate, don't use this field. 

The menu item I provided for the signature tools is correct, but unfortunatly it is blocked by default from being run in a document script ( I believe I stated this in the post). There are a number of ways to enable the usage of this menu item for a document script, but they all require more difficutly than they are worth for this one use. There are better techniques. I apologize for mentioning it. 

For your purposes it would be better to use a button (that looks like a signature box) to prompt the user (with a popup alert box) to use the self sign tool. Not as clean as you'd like, but I can't think of a better PDF based solution.  This is a desktop only approach. If you have users on Mobile, then it needs to be done differently. 

Alternatively there is the Adobe Sign form methodolgy, which is free for basic usage, and since it is run through a server and does not use a PDF viewer it is consistent across all platforms. This is probably your best choice. 

Do a google search on "PDF wet signature" and you'll find a number of articles that discuss this issue. You may even find something useful. 

[Karen29385078rx4f]

Hi Thom,

I've tried running your code in the console and i get an invalid arguments error, in addition I cant find any mention of this menu item in the SDK. Has it changed or been removed?

[Thom Parker]

As I explained in the previous two posts, the menu item "OpenApp_FillSignApp", will not work outside of a privileged context. I'm sorry I mentioned it. BTW: there are no menu items officially listed in the SDK. Nor should there be. Menu items belong to the UI for Acrobat and so are subject to the whims of Adobe. The SDK however, provides a function for returning the names of the menu items in the UI.

Regardless, don't use this menu item.