Suddenly unable to countersign documents

[Mike378354922co7]

We have requirments for progressive countersignatures in our documents.  Typically three to four.  In some cases, one person may sign a document in multiple locations, say twenty times.  This week, we are no longer able to apply more than a single signature to a document.  This has happened before and suddently resolved.  How do we resolve the issue?

[Abambo]

Check this with Adobe support via the admin console.

[Mike378354922co7]

Admin Console?  Where would I find that?

[Abambo]

Admin Console?  Where would I find that?

By @Mike378354922co7

You need to be on a Team or Enterprise subscription for this. You need to be a pland administrator to use the admin console.

[MikelKlink]

What kind of signatures are you talking about? Simple electronic signatures like pasted images of in signatures? Signatures applied by Adobe Acrobat Sign? First hand digital signatures?

[Mike378354922co7]

Talking electronic signatures.  The ones that include teh verbage "Digitally signed by....", along with a watermark graphic and the date and time.  I saw something about having to add email addresses and uploading the document.  That is strictly forbidden by our customer.  Our process, for many years has been to author, sign, review, sign, approve, and sign.  Three individuals, three signatures, one document.  Other documents are multi part which would require a person to sign the same document multiple times.  I have documents in my hand that, as of 31 October, were still signed by multiple people.

[MikelKlink]

Ok, so you are using digital signatures (advanced electronic signatures actually linked to a document version by cryptographic means, backed by X.509 certificates for identity management).

This week, we are no longer able to apply more than a single signature to a document.

In which way are you not able anymore to apply more signatures? Does some error occur when you try? Or are the results invalid?

Can you share an example file before the first signature, after the first signature, and after the second signature (if multiple signatures merely invalidate some signatures)?

[Mike378354922co7]

I dropped a .png file.  There is a graphic which appears to be a message bubble and fountain pen end.  That dimms after applying the signature dispite having digital signatures in the drop down as Permitted Actions After Certifying.

[MikelKlink]

dispite having digital signatures in the drop down as Permitted Actions After Certifying.

Ah, so you don't apply a regular ("approval") digital signature but instead a certification ("author") digital signature as first signature!

You are aware that "signing is allowed" in certified documents (PDFs with a certification signature) means that others may sign in existing, empty signature fields but not that they can create new signature fields and sign in them? The latter only is possible if your first signature is not a certification signature but only an approval signature.

For details see this stack overflow answer.

If this is not the issue here, please share an example PDF file before the first signature and after the first signature.

[Mike378354922co7]

I created a sign off page and generated a dummy signature for it.  For years, our process has been to click on sign, draw a rectangle to encapsulate the signature, then enter the passcode.  The document, then gets stored on a secured server, picked up by the next person and so on.  Some documents come back from, scanned, from the field and are reviewed.  Each section requires a signature.  Currently, this has become a three pass procedure where we use the caligraphic "signature", on each section, go back and make the document editable, then add the date to each "signature", then sign.

At no time have we constructed any kind of field.  I could find nothing about certifying a document, other than the verbage inside of the newer signature dialog box.  Not sure about different types of signatures.

[MikelKlink · Accepted solution]

The signature in your SignedSignature.pdf has both a DocMDP and a FieldMDP transform; in other words, it's a certification signature with even more restrictions. So in particular after that signature others are not allowed to add new signature fields, you have to prepare empty signature fields before certifying to allow others to countersign.

So apparently where you "click on sign" you have a functionality that creates a certification signature. And indeed, the bottom-most icon in the toolbar screenshot you show is the icon for "Certify (visible signatures)". Instead of that you should use the "Digitally sign" functionality of the "Use a certificate" tool:

(You can change the customization of your toolbar to contain that functionality in addition to or instead of the certify functionality.)

I just signed your Signature.pdf with "Digitally sign", see the attached Signature-Regular.pdf, and this file can be signed arbitrarily by others.

[Mike378354922co7]

That seems to be the trick.  We spent a few weeks just trying to figure out how to get signatures working.  Fill & Sign seemed to be where we should have worked, but it didn't provide what we were looking for.  Never thought about "Use a Certificate".

Thanks,