These forums are now Read Only. If you have an Acrobat question, ask questions and get help from one of our experts.

Reader rights and signatures

curtiskline
Registered: Nov 14 2008
Posts: 4
Answered

I have found several references in Adobe help files and on this forum to enabling Acrobat Reader rights, and the fact that this should permit Acrobat Reader users to digitally sign a form (either in an existing signature box or anywhere on the PDF). So, I bought a copy of Acrobat 9 Standard and tried it out. I can't get it to work, and am hoping for some help. Here's what I am doing:

1. Open a PDF in Acrobat 9 Standard. (The PDF file was created by my admin person scanning in an invoice on her Fujitsu ScanSnap, which creates a PDF file using Acrobat 8 Standard)
2. Click on Forms | Add or Edit Fields
3. Click on Add New Field | Digital Signature
4. Drop the signature box in the middle of the page.
5. Click on "Close Form Editing"
6. Click on Advanced | "Extend Forms Fill-in and Save in Adobe Reader", then click on "Save Now"
7. Save the file as a new name (or overwrite the old one).
8. Open in Reader 9 and try to sign.... It's grayed out.

- Right here at this point I did a "Show Security Properties" in Acrobat 9 Standard, and in the Document Restrictions Summary it says "Not Allowed*" next to "Signing".

This shouldn't be so complex.... Wow. And then to not even work! What am I doing wrong here? Any help would be greatly appreciated.

Curtis

My Product Information:
Acrobat Standard 9.0, Windows
George_Johnson
Expert
Registered: Jul 6 2008
Posts: 1876
It seems you need Acrobat Pro or Pro Extended to enable signature usage rights.

According to the following: http://www.adobe.com/products/acrobat/matrix.php

Acrobat Standard can apply certain forms usage rights, but not signature usage rights.

George
curtiskline
Registered: Nov 14 2008
Posts: 4
Well, that makes sense now. The reason I got tripped up was reading the Acrobat 9 Standard Help File, where it says:

"Ordinarily, Reader users can’t save filled-in copies of forms that they complete. However, you can extend rights to Reader users so they have the ability to do so. These extended rights also include the ability to digitally sign existing signature fields in the PDF."

Seems to say that you can do this in Acrobat 9 Standard, but maybe I am reading it wrong.

The complexity of these features is pretty overwhelming. I thought I just wanted to do something simple, enabling a basic workflow between a couple of users at my company. I would think that a $300 piece of software could do that for me, but I guess I will have to go shell out more money to get this one thing done.

Thanks for the quick response.

Curtis
George_Johnson
Expert
Registered: Jul 6 2008
Posts: 1876
It seems that the help file is not completely tailored to just Acrobat Standard.

George