When attempting to sign a pdf document using either the ‘Sign Document’ or ‘Place Signature’ we are getting an error message

Report · Apr 08, 2016

When attempting to sign a pdf document using either the ‘Sign Document’ or ‘Place Signature’ button under the ‘Sign & Verify’ tab in Adobe Acrobat X, we are getting a message saying 'There was an error when attempting to commit this signature. The document has not been saved. The file may be read-only or another user may have it open. Please save the document with a different name or in a different folder'. This is after the signature is applied and when the user clicks save in the Save As dialogue box.

Additionally, we are also having a second issue, when after applying the signature and clicking save, the document saves ok but the signature does not appear on the document.

The preview panel has been turned off and these issue happen intermittently.

All help would be appreciated as users are getting frustrated.

Report · Mar 13, 2018

Hello, is this problem caused with saving the signed document to a network location?

If so, it is a known problem:

"Error when attempting to commit signature" w/ signed document when saving to network location :

"This is a known problem with many Adobe apps, specifically on Netware servers. We have this problem a lot in our company and just have to save the file with a new name, and then manually re-organize the files through Windows Explorer."

I found a workaround on another forum:

Won't save file because it is supposedly Read Only - Adobe Illustrator Windows

It talks about Adobe Acrobat in page 2. The workaround is to open Adobe Acrobat first, then open the file from the open menu.

Now the "save as" after the signature is applied should work.

@Adobe, will you fix this problem of saving / signing to a network drive ? This problem is recurrent with many Adobe Acrobat versions and our users have to sign shared network PDFs every day. It is becoming a hassle in our company.