Can I prevent my signers from editing my document (besides signing it)?

[dyarger]

I know I can password protect it before it can be seen/edited, but I want to prevent editing easily after the document is viewed with the exception of a signature. Any ideas, rather than editing every single field?

[SimonATS]

Depends on what you mean by edit.

The document you upload is converted to pdf. it also gets a PDF permission password preventing editing of the file  in Acrobat. It is also certified on top of that.

So signers can only edit any field you have added in addition to the signature field.

if you also ensure you assign fields to the respective signer signers can only fill those fields assigned to them.

If you are merging data from a different source ito the field, you can set fields to readonly as well.

[dyarger]

In Acrobat, I set all fields to readonly through the editor, and this gave me the desired effect. However, is there any way I can do this in Echosign (AKA changing all fields to read only at the same time)? That would save a step for me. It seems to me I can only edit one field at a time in Echosign. I'm uploading a pre-filled PDF to Echosign, and then adding signatures. I want to make sure one cannot edit neither the content or the placement of the fields.

Is this because I have not converted my PDF to a Echosign form before I upload it to Echosign?

[SimonATS · Accepted solution]

Converting to Echosign form will help, as it gives you access to echosign form fields in Acrobat 11.

In any case though, it's enough to make the fields read-only in Acrobat. Echosign will honour the Acrobat read only flag so no need to do that again in EchoSign.

But yes in the echOsign form editor you can only set this one by one currently.

In your scenario the plament of fields is never editable by a signer. Filling a form obviously is.

Readonly is one way to deal with that,

the other would be to convert to echosign form, then to assign the field to either a prefill or sender role. This basically also makes the field readony for the signer.

[dyarger]

Thanks so much for your support! It's clear to me now. Unfortunately I'm in Acrobat 10 right now, but I'll look into it.

[SimonATS]

The only thing which is different from acrobat 11 compared to any previous version of Acrobat which can add form fields, is that the convert to echosign option just adds an Echosign options to thee gui of acrobat.

it's still possible to make Echosign aware forms i nAcrobat 10 and earlier, but one needs to use text tags. In any case properties like read-only and required fields are carried over to echosign.