Sign a PDF

Three ways to make your signature

• Draw it with a mouse, a trackpad, or best of all a finger or pen on a phone or tablet. The line follows your speed, thinner when fast and thicker when slow, like ink.
• Typed: type your name and pick one of several handwriting styles. Quick and tidy, and accepted in most of the same places as a drawn one.
• Image: a photo or scan of your signature on paper. Make white transparent removes the paper so only the ink sits on the document. Sign on plain white paper in good light, with a dark pen, and crop close.

Choose the ink colour for drawn and typed signatures; dark blue is a common way to show that a page was signed rather than printed. Remember on this device keeps the signature in this browser for next time. Leave it off on a shared or public computer.

Placing it on the page

Go to the page that needs the signature and press Place on page, then drag it into position and pull its corner dot to resize it. Every item you add is listed with the page it sits on, so you can select it again or delete it. To last page and To all pages copy an item, which is how you initial every page of a contract. Text and date adds a printed name, a job title or today's date next to the signature, in a plain font.

What this kind of signature is worth

The tool draws your signature onto the PDF as a picture, the electronic version of signing a printout and scanning it. In many countries, including the EU member states and the United States, a simple electronic signature like this can be legally valid for everyday agreements such as quotes, forms, permission slips and many contracts. Some documents need more: wills, property deeds, notarised papers and some official forms can require a handwritten signature or a qualified electronic signature tied to a verified identity.

A picture of a signature does not prove who added it and does not stop the document being changed afterwards. When either matters, use a signing service that issues certificate based digital signatures, which seal the file and show any later edit. If you are unsure what a document needs, ask whoever asked you to sign it. This is general information, not legal advice.

Keeping your signature safe

Everything happens in your browser: the document and the signature are never sent anywhere, so a contract does not pass through a stranger's server. Still, an image of your signature can be copied by anyone who has a signed file. Send signed documents only to the people who need them, and prefer a PDF to a picture of a signed page, since a PDF is harder to reuse.

If something goes wrong

• The photo of the signature has a grey box around it. The paper was not white enough. Switch on Make white transparent, take the photo in brighter light, or crop tighter.
• The drawn signature looks shaky. Sign on a phone or tablet with a finger or pen, or use Typed.
• It says the PDF is password protected. Unlock it first with unlock PDF, if you have the right to.
• The form fields of the PDF need filling too. Fill them in a PDF reader first, then sign here.