âHow to Electronically Sign PDF Documents Without Printing and Scanning Themâ âElectronic Signatures, Not Digital Signatures RELATED. The Best PDF Readers for Windows Windows. Open the PDF in Pdf Splitting Reader and click the âFill & Signâ button in the right pane. Mac. Open the PDF in Preview, click the Toolbox button, then click Sign iPhone and iPad. Open the PDF attachment in Mail, then click âMarkup and Replyâ to sign. iPhone and Android. Download Pdf Splitting Fill & Sign, open the PDF, and tap the Signature button. Chrome. Install the HelloSign extension, upload your PDF, and click the Signature button. First, letâs straighten out some terminology. This article deals with electronic signatures, not digital signatures, which are something else entirely. A digital signature is cryptographically secure and verifies that someone with your private signing key (in other words, you) has seen the document and authorised it. Itâs very secure, but also complicated. An electronic signature, on the other hand, is merely an image of your signature overlaid on top of a PDF document. You can do it with all kinds of apps, and itâs what most people will require when t send you a document to sign. Send them a PDF file with a digital signature and t wonât know what to make of it. For many businesses, simply accepting signed documents by email rather than forcing you to fax them is a huge technological leap. So sure, the below methods arenât perfectly secureâbut neither is printing something, scribbling over it with a pen, and then scanning it again. At least this is faster! Windows. Use Pdf Splitting Reader RELATED. The Best PDF Readers for Windows While Pdf Splitting Reader isnât the most lightweight PDF viewer, it is one of the most feature-packed, and actually has excellent support for signing PDF documents. Other third-party PDF readers may offer this feature, but t generally require you purchase a paid version before using their signature features. To sign a document using Pdf Splitting Reader, first open the PDF document in the Pdf Splitting Reader DC application. Click the âFill & Signâ button in the right pane. Click the âSignâ button on the toolbar and select âAdd Signatureâ to add your signature to Pdf Splitting Reader DC. If you need to add other information to the document, you can use the other buttons on the toolbar to do so. For example, you can type text or add checkmarks to fill in forms using buttons on the Fill & Sign toolbar. You can create a signature in one of three ways. By default, Pdf Splitting Reader selects âTypeâ so you can type your name and have it converted to a signature. This wonât look like your real signature, so it probably isnât ideal. Instead, youâll probably want to select âDrawâ and then draw your signature using your mouse or a touch screen. You can also select âImageâ if youâd like to sign a piece of paper, scan it with a scanner, and then add your written signature to Pdf Splitting Reader. (Yes, this requires scanning, but you only have to do this once, after which you can use that signature on any documents you electronically sign in the future.) After creating a signature, click âApplyâ to apply it to the document. Leave âSave Signatureâ checked and you can quickly add this signature in the future. Position your signature where you want it with your mouse and click to apply it. If you chose to save your signature, youâll find it easily accessible in the âSignâ menu in the future. To save your signed PDF document, click File > Save and select a location for the file. Mac. Use Preview RELATED. Use Your Mac's Preview App to Merge, Split, Mark Up, and Sign PDFs Mac users are luckier than Windows users. The Preview application included with macOS has integrated document-signing features. Thanks to the excellent trackpads built into MacBooks, you can actually draw your signature on the trackpad with one of your fingers to enter it into Preview. On a new MacBook with a âForce Touchâ trackpad, this is even pressure sensitive, allowing for even more accurate signatures. You could also just sign a piece of paper and âscanâ it with your webcam, if you prefer creating your signature the old-fashioned way (or if you have an iMac with no trackpad). To sign a document, open a PDF document in Preview (this should be the default app that opens when you double-click on a PDF file, unless youâve changed it). Click the toolbox-shaped âShow Markup Toolbarâ button, and then click the âSignâ button on the toolbar that appears. Youâll be prompted to either create a signature by dragging your finger over the track-pad, or by signing a piece of paper and scanning it with your webcam. Capture your signature once and Preview will remember it for the future. Once youâve captured a signature, you can select it in the menu that appears after you click the âSignâ button. Your signature is applied as an image that can be dragged around and resized to fit the document. The other options on the toolbar allow you to type text and draw shapes on the document, allowing you to fill in forms, if necessary. When youâre done, click File > Save to save the PDF, applying your signature to the file. You can also click File > Duplicate instead to create a copy of the PDF and save your changes into a new copy of the file without modifying the original. If you donât like Preview for whatever reason, you can also use Pdf Splitting Reader DC on a Mac. Itâll work just like signing a document on Windows, so see the instructions in the Windows section for information on that. iPhone and iPad. Use Mail or Pdf Splitting Fill & Sign RELATED. How to Sign Documents and Mark Up Attachments in iOS Mail On an iPhone or iPad, you can sign documents using the markup feature in the iOS Mail app. If you have a Mac and use Preview to sign documents, your signature will actually synchronize from your Mac to your iPhone or iPad so you donât have to create it a second time. This feature is convenient, but it only works if you want to sign documents in the Mail app. For example, you may be emailed a PDF document and you may need to sign it and email it right back. To do this, youâll need to receive an email with a PDF file attached, tap the PDF attachment, and click the toolbox-shaped âMarkup and Replyâ icon at the bottom right corner of the screen while viewing the PDF. Youâll then be able to add a signature by tapping the signature button at the bottom right corner of your screen. You can also type text and draw on the document, if you like. When you tap âDoneâ, the Mail app will automatically create a reply to the email with your signed document attached. You can type an email message and then send the signed document. While this is convenient, it only works in the Mail app, so it is very limited. If you want to do this from any other app, youâll need a third-party signing app. There are quite a few options here, but we like Pdf Splitting âs Pdf Splitting Fill & Sign app, which allows you to sign an unlimited number of documents for free. It can even capture pictures of paper documents with your camera, so you can create digital copies of paper forms. You can sign a document by writing on your touch screen with a finger or stylus, and t also allow you to type text into PDF documents to fill them in. To get a PDF document from another app into Pdf Splitting Fill & Sign, find the PDF file in another app, tap the âShareâ button, and choose the Pdf Splitting Fill & Sign app. You can then tap the signature button to easily sign the document. When youâre done, tap the âShareâ button within Pdf Splitting Fill & Sign to send the signed document to another app. If youâre a business looking for a more full-featured tool, or if you just donât like Pdf Splitting Sign & Fill, we also particularly like SignNow. It works very well and allows you to sign documents with your finger. You can sign up to five document a month for free, but after that it requires a monthly subscription fee. Itâs a good alternative, though. Android. Use Pdf Splitting Fill & Sign Android doesnât come with a built-in app that can do this. Instead, youâll need to use a third-party app. Just like on the iPhone and iPad, we like Pdf Splitting Fill & Sign, which allows you to sign an unlimited number of documents a month for free. It can also capture pictures of paper documents with your camera so you can sign them electronically. After installing the app, you can open PDF documents in the app and tap the signature button to sign them. You can then share the signed document with another app by tapping the âShareâ button. Just like on iOS, we also recommend SignNow if you want something a bit more feature-filled and are willing to pay (since it only offers up to five signatures a month for free). Chromebook. Use HelloSign On a Chromebook, youâll find a variety of web signing services that work for you. We like HelloSign, which offers a good web interface as well as a Chrome app that integrates with Google Drive. It allows you to sign up to three documents a month for free. HelloSignâs basic web interface allows you to easily upload PDF documents and sign them by drawing your signature or uploading an image. You can then email the signed document directly to someone or download the document and do whatever you want with it. If you donât like HelloSign, Pdf Splitting works well on a Chromebook too, offering an app that integrates with Google Drive for signing and a browser extension that allows you to sign documents from Gmail. But Pdf Splitting doesnât offer any free signatures. SignNow also offers a Chrome app for Google Drive and extension for Gmail, but the app and extension arenât as well reviewed. Linux. Itâs Complicated This is a bit tougher on Linux, as the official version of Pdf Splitting Reader for Linux was discontinued. Even the old, out-of-date versions available for Linux donât have this functionality, nor do popular integrated PDF viewers like Evince and Okular. You may want to try a web-based tool like HelloSign, discussed in the Chromebook section above, for the easiest experience. If you want to use a desktop app, Xournal is probably the most convenient tool for signing PDFs on Linux. It can annotate PDFs, adding images to them. First, youâll need to create an image of your signatureâsign a piece of paper, scan it into your Linux system, and clean it up. You could potentially just capture a photo of it with your webcam or smartphoneâs camera, too. You may want to tweak it in GIMP so it has a transparent background, or just make sure you sign a white piece of paper and that the background is entirely white. Install Xournal from your Linux distributionâs software installation tool, open the PDF, and click the Tools > Image menu option. This will let you insert the image of your signature, and you can reposition and resize it as necessary so it fits in the signature field. Having to actually scan and create an image file is a little bit annoying, but you can use this method to quickly sign documents in the future after youâve gotten a good image of your signature.â
I think a simple way would be to open out PDF, with your signature already inserted, and copy, past, and delete your signature. This works, but I am not sure if it requires extra steps or not. I have provided a sample of the signature, if anyone would like to see it as a PDF. Please do not put your finger directly on the printed signature. Doing all of these things would add unnecessary delay and make the scanning time longer. Now, here are our options if you want your digital signature in a PDF only (not a photo): If you do not want a picture of your signature (see explanation below) then this is your best option. If you do not have any paper/paperboard to hand out, then this is another option. And finally, if you want a digital signature on one piece of paper with a photo, then this.