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salmani31019146
Participant
August 4, 2017
Answered

How to unlock a signed PDF (drawn signature)

  • August 4, 2017
  • 1 reply
  • 17529 views

I have been sent a PDF document to fill out by my graduate school. I am filling out only certain parts of the document and signing the document. Afterwards, I am emailing the document back to the school so that they may fill out the "office only" portions. But they are unable to edit the document because it is locked since I signed the document.

Could someone walk my through the process, step by step, on how to disable this feature.

Thanks!

This topic has been closed for replies.
Correct answer Josh_Corey

I don't believe you can disable it, I'm not an expert in this area but have enough experience to know that this is standard in Acrobat/Reader that the existing content is "flattened" (no longer editable) after a signature is applied and the PDF is saved.

The ways around this that I am aware of are by using a workflow tool like Adobe Sign where you can define who fills and signs which parts of the document. 

Another method would be for you and the person who needs to add more data after you have signed it to use Adobe Fill & Sign.  You could fill and sign the PDF, download and email to the other person who could also open the PDF in Fill & Sign and would be able to add additional text.  Fill & Sign does not work with the original real form fields, it basically treats the PDF as an image and allows you to add text, annotations and signatures - it is really designed for a single user but would satisfy the workflow you specified.

https://cloud.acrobat.com/fillsign

https://helpx.adobe.com/document-cloud/help/fill-and-sign.html

Thanks,

Josh

1 reply

J
Community Manager
Josh_CoreyCommunity ManagerCorrect answer
Community Manager
August 10, 2017

I don't believe you can disable it, I'm not an expert in this area but have enough experience to know that this is standard in Acrobat/Reader that the existing content is "flattened" (no longer editable) after a signature is applied and the PDF is saved.

The ways around this that I am aware of are by using a workflow tool like Adobe Sign where you can define who fills and signs which parts of the document. 

Another method would be for you and the person who needs to add more data after you have signed it to use Adobe Fill & Sign.  You could fill and sign the PDF, download and email to the other person who could also open the PDF in Fill & Sign and would be able to add additional text.  Fill & Sign does not work with the original real form fields, it basically treats the PDF as an image and allows you to add text, annotations and signatures - it is really designed for a single user but would satisfy the workflow you specified.

https://cloud.acrobat.com/fillsign

https://helpx.adobe.com/document-cloud/help/fill-and-sign.html

Thanks,

Josh

P
Parenting Guide
Participant
April 29, 2020

Thank you for the help. I was facing a similar problem for signing off the deal in the times of lockdown. Had never tried something like this previously but this surely helped. Being the signing authority at Parenting Guide , I used Adobe Fill & Sign to finalize a deal with partner firm and it worked. 

 

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