Why does Adobe Sign not allow sender signatures without replacing Signer 1?

[Swift Public Adjusters]

When preparing a form that requires signatures, Acrobat allows a signature field participant role to be set as "sender." However, there is no opportunity when sending this form to sign unless the sender adds their email in the "Signer 1" spot on the recipients page when preparing to request signatures. This creates an issue where other signature fields with participant roles set as "Signer 1" are now being assigned to the sender instead of the intended recipient.

I have tried designating the signature fields of the sender to "prefill," but signature fields are not allowed to be prefilled--only text fields can be prefilled.

The only work around I have come up with is designating the sender as signer one and the recipient as signer 2. There are two issues with this. First, when the document has been signed by both sender and recipient, adobe shows that it was signed by three parties: the sender, signer 1 (same as sender), and signer 2 (recipient). This appears strange and unpolished. Second, if I want to send the same document without first signing it, I can't because the recipient then automatically becomes "signer 1" and is assigned to the sender fields rather than the recipient fields.

[Meenakshi Negi]

Hi Swift Public Adjusters,

Thank you for reaching out.

If you need to fill in the document and then send it to the signer, you need to add yourself as the first recipient.

This is the designed workflow for Acrobat Sign. When assigning the form fields, assign the fields for yourself as the first recipient, not using the Prefill option. 

Prefill option is only used when you must fill in the text fields, not sign the document.

Try using the workflow suggested and check if you still get the message of the three parties' signed message.

Let us know if you have any questions.

Thanks,

Meenakshi

[etrpx]

Just ran into the same issue today, this is bad design - if you cannot pre-sign the document as a sender, the option should not exist. Could not figure out how to get it to work for the life of me until I googled the issue and came upon this. By the way, I set full name and date to be filled by sender (and put in my own email address) as well - these are text fields, and there is also no opportunity to fill them prior to routing for other signatories. I've even tried inviting myself as a signatory (even though "Sender" was selected) and it ALSO does not work.

TL;DR: The "Sender" option in form fields is totally broken. If Adobe Sign only works a certain way, form fields should reflect it.