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The Easy Way to Sign PDF Files & Forms Without Printing Them

One of my all-time favorite PDF tricks enables you to sign your PDF files without having to print them out first.

Cast your mind back and see if the following sounds familiar: You’ve received a form or document (as a PDF) that you must sign, but you can’t write on your computer screen. This leaves you with a number of ridiculous choices, like:

  • Print the PDF, sign it, scan it back to PDF, and then email to sender, or
  • Print the PDF, sign it, fax it back to the sender, or
  • Print the PDF, sign it, and then mail it back to the sender.

The trick I’m going to show you using Nitro Pro will let you sign any PDF you receive with a couple of clicks (assuming the file is not secured). To start with, you’ll need a scanner to get your signature into electronic form, but once that’s done all you’ll need is Nitro Pro to do the signing.

Note: An important thing to know before we begin is that this trick is very different to inserting a real ‘digital signature.’  The digital signatures you can use with PDF files with Nitro PDF Professional and Adobe Acrobat are there to show not just a visual representation of your hand written signature, but to protect the integrity of a document and make it tamper proof. See our secure and sign PDF files feature info for more.

Here’s a screenshot to give you a quick visual idea of what we’re going to achieve. In it you can see me selecting my signature stamp annotation (see our annotate PDF page for related feature info), and also the signature stamp applied to a page in my PDF.

Signature stamp annotation for signing PDF files

Setting up your signature

The first task is to get a copy of your handwritten signature onto your computer.

  1. On a piece of white paper, sign your name.
  2. Open Nitro PDF Professional.
  3. On the Home tab, in the Convert group, click the arrow below Create PDF Nitro PDF icon.
  4. Click Create PDF From Scanner Nitro PDF icon.
  5. Choose your settings, and then click Scan.
  6. Your signature should now be in PDF form and ready to crop to size.
  7. On the Insert and Edit tab, in the Pages group, click Crop.
  8. Drag around your signature and crop it so your signature has very little whitespace around it.
  9. Double-click on the highlighted area, and then click Crop.
  10. Save and name your signature.

Setting up a signature stamp annotation

This task takes the PDF file containing your signature and turns it into a stamp annotation.

  1. Open Nitro Pro.
  2. On the Review tab, in the Comment group, click the arrow below Stamp.
  3. Click Create New Stamp.
  4. Browse to and select your newly created PDF with your signature, and then click Save.

Adding your signature to a PDF

Now that you’re set up, it’s just a matter of ‘stamping’ your signature onto the page wherever and whenever you like.

  1. Open Nitro Pro.
  2. On the Review tab, in the Comment group, click the arrow below Stamp.
  3. Select your signature stamp.
  4. On the page to sign, click and drag the stamp to the correct size. Click on it to drag it to the correct position.
  5. That’s it, you’re done. Save the file and email it to the sender.

This trick relates quite closely to another tip I’ll cover soon: how to fill in forms in PDF files by inserting text.

Stay tuned.

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