How to cancel a signature request and what signers see

Most signature requests that need cancelling were sent a little too early: a figure on page two was wrong, the schedule moved, or the wrong person at the other company was asked to sign. The instinct is to fix the document and hope nobody signed the old one. The right move is to take the old request out of circulation properly, so every link to it stops working and everyone who might open it is told, and then send the corrected version as a new request. This guide covers how that works and what signers see. It is general information, not legal advice.

When you can cancel

A sent request cannot be edited. That is a deliberate one way door: nobody can alter a document while somebody else is reading it. Cancelling, which the product calls withdrawing and many tools call voiding, is how you close the door on a version you no longer want.

Withdrawal is available for any request that has been sent and has not finished. A request that is sent, partly signed, declined, expired or stuck after a failed certification can all be withdrawn. Two cannot: one that is completed, because signing has finished and the certified PDF has already gone to everyone, and one that is already withdrawn. A draft that was never sent needs no withdrawal at all; delete it, since drafts are the only requests that can be deleted.

Other signing tools draw the same line. Google’s eSignature help, for example, says that to change or cancel a request after sending, you cancel the pending request, make changes to the source document and send a new request. The table below sets out each state a request can be in and what to do with it.

Give a reason

A withdrawal takes an optional reason of up to 500 characters. Write one. It becomes part of the request’s history, and months later it is the only explanation of why a version that was nearly signed never was.

Make it factual and short. The statement of work signing example shows the right tone. The first version of a data migration statement of work had reached the client sponsor, who had opened and read it, when a data governance review changed the schedule. The sender withdrew it with the reason “schedule revised, version two to follow”. That line tells anyone reviewing the file exactly what happened in five words.

A few more reasons that do the same job:

• “Wrong rate in clause 4, corrected version to follow”
• “Sent to the wrong contact, reissued to the company secretary”
• “Project cancelled by the client on 12 September”
• “Duplicate request, the original is still active”

Each names the problem and what happens next. Avoid reasons that only make sense to you on the day, such as “see email”, and anything you would not want a signer to read, since the people still holding links are the ones being told the document was withdrawn.

What signers see and who is emailed

Withdrawing does three things at once. Every signer who had not yet signed or declined is moved to expired. A withdrawn event is added to the request’s history. And an email titled Withdrawn, followed by the request title, is sent to everyone who was invited and still held a live link.

Anyone who opens an old link afterwards does not see the document. The signing page answers that the document was withdrawn by the sender. On the statement of work example, the client sponsor’s link now gives exactly that answer, and version one still exists as an honest record that ends at withdrawn.

Two things do not happen. Signers who had already signed are not emailed, because their part was done; tell them yourself if their signature was on the version you are replacing. And withdrawal applies to the whole request: you cannot cancel one signer and leave the others running. The difference between withdrawing a request and letting it expire is covered in voided versus expired requests.

Cancel, resend, or let it expire

Before withdrawing, check that cancelling is really the problem you have.

If an invitation went missing, resend instead. The embedded purchase order signing example shows why. A site supervisor raised purchase order PO-8842 and signed, and the operations manager’s invitation was lost in a crowded inbox. The sender pressed Resend beside his name, which rotated his signing link, killed the old one and added an invitation resent event to the history. The manager signed from the fresh link, typing the cost code into a required field, and the order completed with a twelve event log. Nothing needed cancelling.

If the document is wrong or the deal is off, withdraw. Withdraw a declined request too: the timesheet approval signing example shows a sender withdrawing a declined timesheet with a note that a corrected sheet had been sent, then issuing the fix as a new request.

If nothing is wrong but nobody acted, it will expire on its own. Every request expires 30 days after creation, and that period cannot be changed. The tenancy notice signing example explains what that thirty day expiry means for a notice nobody acts on. An expired link tells the signer the request has expired, but nobody receives a withdrawn email, so expiry is the quiet option.

Send the corrected version

Correct the PDF, check every signer’s name, email and order, and send it as a new request. In the covering message, say plainly that it replaces an earlier version and what changed.

If a signer on the old version had already signed, they must sign again; their earlier signature belongs to a document that will never complete. Number versions in the request title so the history reads in order on the request list.

Then keep both records. Australia’s Electronic Transactions Act 1999, for Commonwealth laws, accepts an electronic record as retained where the method reliably keeps it complete and unaltered and it remains accessible, and the ESIGN Act in the United States asks that a retained record accurately reflect the information and stay accessible for the required period. A withdrawn request is part of that story, not clutter. Where a document had already been accepted, the Queensland Building and Construction Commission’s reminder applies well beyond building: once a quote is accepted, even verbally, it is a contract, and changing it takes a written variation rather than a cancelled link.

Common mistakes

Withdrawing when a resend would do. A lost invitation needs a fresh link, not a new document.

No reason. The history will not explain itself later.

Forgetting people who already signed. They are not emailed; tell them.

Trying to withdraw a completed document. It is signed; a change needs a new agreement.

Sending the fix before withdrawing the original. Two live versions invite someone to sign the wrong one. The whole lifecycle of a one signer contract, including stalls and expiry, is set out in e-signature for freelancers.

Build it

The withdraw a signature request page shows the withdrawal from the sender’s status page. A withdrawal takes an optional reason of up to 500 characters, expires every outstanding signer, adds a withdrawn event and emails everyone still holding a live link; it is refused on a completed or already withdrawn request and cannot be reversed. Only drafts can be deleted, a sent request cannot be edited, and resending to a single signer rotates their link instead. The tutorial on sending a PDF for e-signature covers sending the corrected document.