Participant

Answered

Signature field detected - I never added a signature field

Forum|Forum|12 years ago
May 15, 2013
17 replies
74880 views

Hi, when I open my PDF in Reader, I suddenly get a green bar along the top saying "Signature field detected." I never added a signature field to the PDF. How do I remove this green bar? Thanks, Siegfried

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Correct answer EnterpriseHelp

Set the detection pref here: http://www.adobe.com/devnet-docs/acrobatetk/tools/PrefRef/Windows/FeatureLockdown.html#SigningwithEchoSign

Ben

I

imtigger2

Participant

This is where this causes me HUGE issues with my customers...

I have a company called Sign Holders MFG Co. and POP Plastics Inc. I mfg sign holders. Have you been to a local Costco store? You see the flexible PVC sign holders with magnets on them with product prices in them? I mfg those. They are 'sign' holders.

ALL of my documents in PDF, quotes, invoices, catalogs, drawings... etc.. ALL have the word "sign" in them.

My customers ALL have many PDF's from me, on their systems already. I can't change them. I can't recall them. Most of all, there's no practical way for me to ask all my customers to modify their systems.

This is an issue with Adobe, not me, but now it's become MY problem. To my customers, it's MY fault. "maybe" they'll see the same thing with other PDF's on their systems, "if" the word 'signature' or 'sign' is there there, but ALL of my PDF's have the word 'sign' in them. So to them, this is MY fault.

Seriously, most of them have problems even downloading attachments. I try sending dropbox links and I get "where did our downloaded file go?". Yea, they are so bad at times I have to send pretty little photos embedded in email for them. Ha.. even on my lame excuse for a web page (www.popplastics.com) I've had to put large green arrow POINTING OUT where our PDF catalog downlink is because they "can't find it".

I'm not a tech company. I mfg sign holders, but this is what I have to deal with.

What I've received lately is a LOT of phone calls and emails asking me, "hey, are you requiring a signature on your PDF's now? I don't get it". As well, the ones who are already wary of viruses and trojan files are asking me, "... hey, all of your PDF's have some sort of trojan hidding in them, did you know that?.." or "did someone in your company add a virus to all your files?... for some reason now ALL my documents on my computer are asking about this "green signature thing", and that's after I opened some of your PDF's to check prices... is our system effected now? it looks like your files affected all our PDF on all our computers.."

THIS IS THE WORSE OF THEM; I received this email from a my largest reseller of my products; , "Dan.... there is a major concern with the 1000+ PDF's we have from your company. It seems they've all been effected with a phishing virus that asks us for a signature? Or personal information? We have our sales team of 38 asking about this and until you fix this, I've asked them not to accept any files from your company via email, and we've removed all your files from our systems, mobile devices and cloud servers. Please advise a fix immediately."

Great. I'm losing sales until "I" fix this problem with "my" PDF files? Perfect.

This can't just turn into an "opt out" option. Please. I don't need these headaches with my customers right now. I'm not overreacting and trying to remain calm about it. I'm a reasonable person who takes responsibility for things myself, and never blame someone else. Truly. I love Adobe products and my business depends on them, but I can't "fix" what's already out there. It's not an option for me.

Please please pick up the pace on this guys. Please.

I'm just venting... I know there are fixes for MY system, no need to repeat. Thank you.

Dan B, CEO

POP PLASTICS INC.

Sign Holders, Literature Holders - Custom Fabrications

www.signholders.com (down for now until we have a notice on our site regarding this issue)

www.popplastics.com

G

George_Johnson

Inspiring

Dan,

I realize you can't do anything about what's already out there, but I think it would be a good idea if you can find a way to only distribute PDFs that have been secured as appropriate based on how they're intended to be used.

I

imtigger2

Participant

George Johnson wrote:
Dan,
I realize you can't do anything about what's already out there, but I think it would be a good idea if you can find a way to only distribute PDFs that have been secured as appropriate based on how they're intended to be used.

I appreciate it George, but as you already pointed out, I can't do anything with regards to what's out there, and that's the main issue here. Preventing it going forward shouldn't be much of an issue with newly released documents... however... the damage is done and it's up to me to take my time to repair it and console my customers and advise them.

My documents are secured based on how they're intended to be used by my customers. Allowing changes, printing and modification at their will. Thank you.

A

Anonymous

Here is a fairly simple 'work around' that can be done by the author. Prior to release, enable your PDF for 'commenting' ( File > Save As > Reader Extended PDF > Enable Commenting and Measuring ).

This action does prevent the 'Signature Field Detected' prompt. This may not be an ideal fix, as it will set your PDF so that readers can add comments (Right-Click > Add Sticky Note), but at least this is a work around that does not have users tinkering in their Registry.

For our purposes this will do until this problem is fixed by Adobe.

A

AuctionHugh

Participating Frequently

While that seems like a simple solution for many - kudos to you - it does not resolve my situation. I use the save as pdf option in office files (word - excell - powerpoint) here at kallen web design ( www.kallenweb.com when we do our small business website design and development, mostly in Kalamazoo Michigan - please pardon the plug). It does not have options to tweak like that.

T

Test Screen Name

Legend

May still be possible. Just open your created files (on at a time) in Acrobat, apply reader extensions. Doesn't matter if they were made by Acrobat. Clearly you DO need Acrobat Pro.

A

Anonymous

Has there been any progress on this annoying problem? I read about some registy hack, but that 'solution' is less than ideal since my distributed PDFs go to thousands of users worldwide. Perhaps I could suggest a simple 'disable EchoSign detection' checkbox accessible in Acrobat by the author of the PDF? That would be an acceptable solution for this problem. Thanks.

G

George_Johnson

Inspiring

Have you guys who need to send your PDFs to others tried setting security as decribed previously in this thread? If this isn't an acceptable approach, I'd be curious to know why.

S

Smavitz

Participating Frequently

For me it is cracking open and setting the security for over 200 forms and then re-linking them to all the places they live on the web. From a software company promising an efficient work place - it does not fell like that today.

Our company has serious legal consequences currently pending with this issue - and Adobe is clearly not going to throw us a bone. In addition to spouting off on this forum I have pulled out all the Adobe business cards I've aquired over the years of territory managers, account managers and business partners I've met during meetings and seminars sponsored by Adobe. I've called them, explained the situation and they have all listened curiously - then all promised to look into this and return my call. Weeks later... **crickets**. Nothing. Not one word. I have my answer.

George, your solution IS not only an "acceptable solution" - it is my ONLY solution and I am grateful for it.

L

LonePine

Known Participant

This just happened to me after I updated Acrobat Pro 11.0.03 from the Cloud subscription. I produce dozens of publications everyday from predefined templates in ID 8.0.1. Now, all of my new PDFs are tainted with this embarassing green stink BUG. It is clearly related to EchoSign and some recent changes that Adobe has made to support it. None of my PDFs contain forms, form fields, certificates or signatures. So WTF! I wouldn't waste time trying to reinstall an older version either. Between the machivelian activation schemes and subscribing to the Cloud this is not a viable option. It would be easier to draw on paper and send out JPEGs. This problem must be fixed immediately by Adobe or they will no longer have customers for this stuff.

A

Anonymous

Very true. This is a VIRAL marketing message designed to promote ECHOSIGN.

How do we know that Adobe is not going to treat other "innocent" content in the future to special treatment? Perhaps other keywords could display banner ads so that Adobe Reader could generate a bit of "pay per click" revenue e.g. If a PDF mentions the word cars then all that wasted white space could be filled with video etc.

If Adobe are going to parse the semantic content of PDF they might as well go the the whole hog and harvest email adresses for carefully crafted spam campaigns that seem relevant to the document topics. You know the sort of thing - "I see you are creating a lot of tax documents - why not move the business to Grand Cayman? The Feds will never get you there!"

Pete

J

jll-it

Participant

I thought I made the registry tweak but I still get the green bar after the change and a reboot. Am I making the incorrect change?

pwillener

Legend

Try bEnableSignPane instead.

J

jll-it

Participant

Thanks, Pat, but it still didn't work. I've got both in the registry. After a reboot, I'm still seeing the green bar.

C

CoderInTx

Participant

It's crazy, but we got around it. In the PDF we put 1pt spaces between the letters in the words Signature and Signatures and the green bar quit appearing without visibly affecting the presentation of the text. If you have control over your source PDF files, you can do the same. Good luck.

G

George_Johnson

Inspiring

Another thing you can do to prevent a particular document from triggering this is to apply standard password security. For example, if you set up the restrictions so that the allowed changed are "Commenting, filling in form fields, and signing existing signature fields", the EchoSign e-signature stuff won't be enabled.

D

Dpakch

Adobe Employee

Hi Everyone,

Thank you for your patience and suggestions. We are working on resolving this issue but in the meanwhile kindly follow the steps mentioned here to disable the green bar in Adobe Reader: http://www.adobe.com/devnet-docs/acrobatetk/tools/ReleaseNotes/11/11.0.03.html#echosign-integration

Please feel free to post back the results.

Regards,

Deepak

A

Anonymous

Thanks for the post. But, please note - 2 MISTAKES if you follow that link:

1. At the page, it says: "If the words 'Sign' or 'Signature' are detected in conjection with any line..." The word is "conjunction", not "conjection".

2A. Look at the path to the recommended Windows reg entry.

2B. Then click on the "Preference Reference" link. On that linked page, look at the path to the reg entry.

2C. They are different paths. See, I spent the time here a few days ago to find that "Preference Reference" page and to manually enter the reg fixes on that page... Only to discover yesterday that it is the wrong path.

Here is the correct path at your linked page: HKLM\SOFTWARE\Policies\Adobe\(product name)\(version)\FeatureLockdown\cServices\

Here is the incorrect path shown at your "Preference Reference" page: HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Adobe\Acrobat Reader\11.0\Originals\

Adobe, please improve your quality control.

try67

Community Expert

HOW TO DISABLE THIS "FEATURE" (Reader XI, Windows only):

Download and run the .reg file from this link:

http://www.payloadz.com/d1/freeproducts.asp?id=2222128

IMPORTANT: This registry file will disable the Sign pane in Reader XI entirely, including the newly added "signature detection" feature (green bar at the top of the document).

If you wish to re-enable the Sign pane, you can use this .reg file:

http://www.payloadz.com/d1/freeproducts.asp?id=2222131

USE AT YOUR OWN RISK!

A

Anonymous

Gilad D, did you actually try that fix?

I ask because I did a manual registry change a few days ago to disable the Sign pane, but that did not disable the green "detection" bar from appearing.

In HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Adobe\Acrobat Reader\11.0\Originals - I set bEnableSignPane as "0"

Of course, maybe I didn't do the reg tweak correctly, etc.

try67

Community Expert

Yes, I tested it and it worked fine (on my computer). I'm also developing a

similar file for Acrobat XI.

S

sfainc0110

Participating Frequently

I got the same the problem with the "Singature Field Detected" green bar and here's my solution:

1. Download the trial version of Adobe Acrobat XI Pro (it should be version 11.0.0).

2. Install the Download Manager which takes you to download Acrobat application. NOTE: Do not update the Download Manager itself otherwise you are stuck with the Adobe Application Manager which doesn't do application reinstallation.

3. When you are installing Acrobat, you will be asked to choose Trail / Subscription or enter serial number. Since I use Creative Cloud, choose Trail / Subscription. After that, you are all set.

I tested it on Illustrator by exporting a file as PDF and it works. No more that "Singature Field Detected" green bar anymore.

If your Adobe Application Manager application ask for update, don't do it. Adobe Acrobat version 11.0.3 is what causes the problem. Wait until the next update and see if they fix it.