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Blue Ribbon Pet
Blue Ribbon Pet
Participant
May 16, 2013
Question

Ho do I remove a digital signature field, that cannot be found, in Adobe Acrobat Pro XI?

  • May 16, 2013
  • 8 replies
  • 40131 views

The wierdest thing happend and I have no explanation. I have been working on a file all week, opened it, closed it, printed it multiple times, and only today did a mysterious problem appear. Upon opening the file for the 20th or so time, an alert appeard at the top of the PDF doc saying: (on left side) "Signature field(s) detected" - (on right side) "Open Sign Pane.".

I am running on Windows 7 Professionsl. I read a few suggestions in this community board and after trying everything to remove this mystery signature field, it keeps saying cannot find any fields. WTH? I never added any, the file WAS fine, and all of a sudden this happens? The kicker is; that I re-printed to PDF from the original Filemaker file as I have done dozens of times without this problem, after deleting the corrupted file, and the same thing happened.

Anyone have any ideas how to get rid of this non-existing digital signature field that apparently exists???

**UPDATE** It now seems that ALL NEW PDF documents I am creating today are adding a digital signature field that I am NOT adding it myslef. I just chose: print to Adobe PDF to some new docs and it happened to each of them, the same green pop-up upon opening the docs; as stated above: (on left side) "Signature field(s) detected" - (on right side) "Open Sign Pane."

Now another thing I noticed is that it did not happen earlier this morning (same computer) because I went back and opened them and they are fine, no pop-up about signature detected, it is only happening since a couple of hours ago on all my new docs... I am very frustrated. I even contacted Adobe Echosign, and they have created a ticket for me...waiting to hear from them.

Message was edited by: Blue Ribbon Pet

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8 replies

A
Anonymous
August 29, 2013

New Feature came in the last update.

Here is the reference material to disable it:

Signing with EchoSign

These preferences allow IT to remove signing options from the product's user interface.

http://www.adobe.com/devnet-docs/acrobatetk/tools/PrefRef/Windows/FeatureLockdown.html?zoom_highlight=echosign#idkeyname_1_6294

Summary table
bEnableEchoSignDetectionDisplays the Document Message Bar when a blank signature field is detected.
bEnableFillSigSpecifies whether to remove the Sign Now panel from the Sign Pane.
bEnableSignPaneSpecifies whether to remove the Sign task pane button from the toolbar.
bEnableEchoSignDetection

Supported on WindowsSupported on MacSupported by AcrobatSupported by Adobe Reader

Top>FeatureLockdown>Signing with EchoSign>bEnableEchoSignDetection

Data typeboolean: DWORD value > REG_DWORD
Default1
Version #11.0.03
Lock PathHKLM\SOFTWARE\Policies\Adobe\(product name)\(version)\FeatureLockdown\cServices
SummaryDisplays the Document Message Bar when a blank signature field is detected.
DetailsWhen enabled, the product tries to detect if a document may need to be signed. If the words "Sign" or "Signature" are detected next to any line, a document message bar appears with an "Open Sign Pane" button. Possible values include:
  • 0: Don't detect signature fields.
  • 1: Do detect signature fields.
Camst4
Camst4
Inspiring
August 15, 2013

Had this happen today exporting from Indesign CC - upgraded only a week ago.

I found the problem was just 1 Illustrator file. Saving as an eps, or back saving (then re-saving) as CS5 didn't work either.

In the end I just rasterized it to convert to a PSD.

try67
Community Expert
try67Community Expert
Community Expert
May 21, 2013

I've written a simple registry tweak that disables the Sign pane, as well as this annoying new "feature" from both Acrobat and Reader.

It can be downloaded for free from here: http://try67.blogspot.com/2013/05/acrobatreader-disable-sign-pane.html

B
BradMacPro
Known Participant
May 28, 2013

Thanks, but I don't see a similar option for Mac users. I've got lots of PDF files with the letters sign in them, say as part of the word InDesign. This green bar is confusing our users. I even looked at the .plist files and found nothing to turn this EchoSign detection. According to Adobe:

http://www.adobe.com/devnet-docs/acrobatetk/tools/PrefRef/Windows/FeatureLockdown.html#idkeyname_1_6200

This setting applies to Macs, but I have to disagree.

D
DavidB3
Participating Frequently
August 14, 2013

This post on my website can be found here: http://try67.blogspot.com/2013/05/acrobatreader-disable-sign-pane.html

There's also a link there to the instruction page Adobe created themselves, after I published my post.


Gilad D (try67) wrote:

This post on my website can be found here: http://try67.blogspot.com/2013/05/acrobatreader-disable-sign-pane.html

There's also a link there to the instruction page Adobe created themselves, after I published my post.

Thank you for the info. I had misread the Adobe instructions when I first looked at them, but I followed them this time and it seems to have fixed the problem.

Now I can send PDF invoices that contain the word "sign" (as in signage) without making clients think they somehow have to sign them. What an annoying feature, especially without a Preference to deactivate it.

A
Anonymous
May 21, 2013

This issue is also being tracked in the Reader forum:

http://forums.adobe.com/thread/1212473?start=0&tstart=0

Some users have identified that if the word "sign" or "signature" appears in a document it triggers the new green banner.  We're a large state court and guess what - thousands of documents we receive and create contain those words. We spent two hours on the phone with Adobe yesterday and got no answers.

J
jeffyerkey
Participating Frequently
July 2, 2013

I can verify that it also is triggered by the word, "subscribe."  Frak!

try67
Community Expert
try67Community Expert
Community Expert
May 17, 2013

This seems to be a bug with the new version of Acrobat (11.0.3).

T
Test Screen Name
Legend
May 17, 2013

Check out your old PDF files, and old ones from other places. Do they show it too?

try67
Community Expert
try67Community Expert
Community Expert
May 17, 2013

Yes.

Edit: Not all files, but many do...

D
davishaynes
Known Participant
May 17, 2013

I don't want any security on my PDFs, they are for the web.

D
davishaynes
Known Participant
May 17, 2013

No. Old PDF files do not show Signature Field(s) detected message. The file I am referring to was originally a Word file that was Saved as PDF from Word (which opened it automatically in Acrobat). There was no sort of signature field created in Word, and Acrobat is showing No Fields.

G
George_Johnson
Inspiring
May 16, 2013

Can either of you post a screen shot of the message? I'm thinking it's not referring to an actual digital signature field, but rather something to do with e-signing (ala EchoSign). If so, adding security should make it go away.

G
George_Johnson
Inspiring
May 16, 2013

I just checked the release notes for the recent 11.0.3 update, and includes something about Acrobat and Reader intelligently detecting if a document may need to be signed as part of additional EchoSign integration, so this is probably what's going on. Again, this can be avoided by adding standard password security.

Blue Ribbon Pet
Blue Ribbon PetAuthor
Participant
May 16, 2013

(Green bar is the message I get on everything now)

Hi George, Thanks for the info, I just sent the link to Adobe EchoSign, with the quoted text you are referring to...I see what you are saying and hopefully this is info for them to help me figure out how to disable it. Here is what I sent to them:

________________________________________________________________________________________________

It was brought to my attention the following: http://www.softpedia.com/get/Office-tools/PDF/Adobe-Acrobat.shtml

EchoSign integration:
· Acrobat and Reader now intelligently detect if a document may need to be signed. On successful detection, a document message bar appears with a button “Open Sign Pane” which on clicking opens the right-hand Sign Pane.


This seems to be EXACTLY what is happening. Can someone please look into this and please reply to me with a possible solution?

________________________________________________________________________________________________

We do not password protect, or put security on our PDF catalogs, sheets or any marketing material as anyone should be able to view it (most of the time) with the exception of price lists. I hope I do not have to put security on everything going forward as this would pose a big problem...it shouldn't be this difficult, I should just be able to turn it off.

D
davishaynes
Known Participant
May 16, 2013

Me too. Signature Field(s) Detected. Cannot get it to stop. Driving me (and my boss) nuts. Please advise.

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