E-Sign Password Protection - Management Issues!

[Robertlopez]

Adobe E Sign has now removed its classic view. A really useful feature of classic view was you could password protect an outgoing document for signing without having to embed the password into the document. This meant that the receiver needed a password to sign the document but once signed it would come back without the need for the sender to then have that password to open it.The signed document could be filed (on a local server) without the need for password to open it at a later date. It seems to me that under the new 'improved' Adobe E-sign the password goes into the document and as a result when it comes back you need that password to open it. Because the document is secured you cannot remove the password which means you are stuck with it. All this means that signed agreements can no longer be indexed and searched as well as you now have to have a system to track all the different passwords on all the different documents that build up over time. Such a database is near impossible to build because passwords change and often do so at non specific times. Its hard to track that client A used this password for this period, that one for that and so on. All of which you now need to know if you want to open a signed agreement.  I would have thought it would be obvious how short-sighted embedding an e-signed password into the actual PDF as opposed to the transmission of the agreement is. this is. A typical user sends out lots of documents for signing. That user wants a password for some basic security - under the classic mode the recipient could use a password to access the document, sign it and it would then go back as a signed non password protected PDF. from there your happy E-sign subscriber could then download it onto a local server where it could later be indexed and searched. Now the user cannot do either. Moreover, you need to build a password database for the 1000's of different signed PDF's that build up over time. Is there a way around this and if not do the Adobe programmers realise what they have done to wreck a really useful feature they used to have.

[ScottCarter]

Hi Robert!

There are two different passwords in play, The recipient verification password, and the view final PDF password, and both are still on the page, but the one you are looking for has moved to the same line as the recipient email.

When adding your recipients, you should see an email icon just to the right of the recipient email address with a little arrow pointing down.

Click that icon, and a list will pop-down showing the types of verification you want to apply to the individual recipient.  This is the password used during the signature process for the recipient to gain access to the agreement, and sounds like the option you are looking for.

Another thing that has changed is that the recipient passwords have been individualized, as opposed to being applied to the whole recipient set.  This means you will have to define the password for each recipient, though those values may be the same literal string.

The password in the Options section is the "view final PDF" password. This password is only applied after the full signature cycle, and is the one embedded in the PDF. 

Based on your usage description, this value should be unchecked and not used.