Acrobat 9 Family of Products
Signing Documents
Security Feature User Guide
Why Can’t I Certify? 96
Because certification is designed to provide a higher level of assurance about document integrity as well
as define the boundaries of permitted changes, certifying a dynamic form requires special procedures.
Dynamic forms can contain behaviors that prevent certification. Dynamic forms may need to be
configured to support certification.
To configure a dynamic form for certifying: Choose
File > Form Properties
and display the Defaults tab. In
the Scripting panel, set
Preserve Scripting Changes to Form When Saved
to
Manual
. When the form is
subsequently opened in Acrobat or Adobe Reader (with signing rights), certification will be possible.
Figure 66 Dynamic form certification setting
6.2.5 Why Can’t I Certify?
In order to certify a document, the certifying signature must be the first one in the document and there
must be no restrictions on the document that prevents certifying. Either of these two situations may arise
if you are not the author of the document. When a document is ineligible for certification, the certification
user interface items are disabled.
In order to certify the document, clear existing signatures, remove the restrictions if you have permission
to do so, or save the document under a new name so that you are the document author.
6.3 Signing with an Approval Signature
Documents may be signed with simple approval signatures. When a document is part of a workflow where
document elements do not need to be locked, use an approval signature. PDFs can be signed in Acrobat,
in Reader (in special cases), or in a browser.
6.3.1 Signing Documents in Acrobat
You can create a new signature field or sign an existing one:
If your document already contains a signature field, simply click on it and follow the instructions or
choose a
Sign Document
menu item.
If you want to create a new field on-the-fly as part of the signing process, choose a
Place Signature
menu item. You may want to read
Chapter 4, “Authoring Signable Documents”
if you would like to
control how the document behaves once it is signed.
Before continuing:
Configure your application as described in
“Setting up the Signing Environment” on page 46
.
Prepare the document for certification as described in
“Setting up a Document for Certification” on
page 93
.