Prevent certain fields from flattening after a signature?

Question

I work in an administrative position for a university. It is often the case that a form has a section for the student to fill and sign as well as a section to be filled and signed by at least one other party, or a "For Office Use Only" section. I understand that it is standard Adobe practice that after a form is signed, you cannot edit other fields. However, is there a way to prevent this from happening to certain fields that need to be filled after the student signs? i.e., Ideally after a student signs and saves all of the fields meant for THEM to edit get locked, but once the form gets back to our office we are still able to fill the certain fields that we were meant to fill and the students should not have.

I see lots of posts talking about a "Sign" section under Properties that achieves this but my version of Adobe Acrobat does not have this. I also want to avoid sending things for signatures through Adobe because it limits accessibility for students, as almost all form sharing happens via email on this campus. I also want to stress that signatures are not singularly the problem, as there is still quite a bit of other fields that need to be filled by the office after the student signs.

Thanks for any insight.

Amal. · Answer

Hi there

We are sorry for the trouble. As described, you want the PDF ofrms to be partially fillable and to be signed ny office staff after getting them signed by the students.

++ Adding to the discussion.

As described you are sharing the PDF forms via email attachment. So once the PDF file is filled and signed by the student and the signature process is completed the file becomes read only (design behavior) and no further changes can be made to the file.

If you want the office staff to fill and sign the PDF forms after they are filled and signed by the students you need to share them via Adobe sign (Fill and Sign tool > Request for signature) and add the student email and the office staff email in the recipient email box in the order you want the signatures so that once the first party (Student) signs the document it will be moved to second party (Office Staff) so that the signature process can be completed, Also you need to assign the text fields and signature fields in the PDF form to students and office staff so that they can fill their respective fields and sign the document.

For more information please look at the help pages listed below:

1. https://helpx.adobe.com/in/acrobat/using/creating-distributing-pdf-forms.html

2. https://helpx.adobe.com/in/acrobat/using/send-for-signature.html

Hope this information will help

Regards

Amal

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