E signature field types

The palette, in its own order

Signature block first, because it is the one that saves the most work, then signature, initials, date signed, name, title, company, email, text and checkbox. That ordering is deliberate: the block sits at the top so you consider it before assembling the same arrangement out of four loose fields. Every one of them is placed against a specific recipient, so the same palette produces different colours depending on which card is selected.

Two carry ink

Signature at 200 by 60 points and initials at 80 by 50. Both take the image the signer produces, scaled to fit while keeping its proportions, drawn left aligned with a thin rule beneath. Neither can be pre-filled and neither can be typed into. One of these, or a signature block, has to exist for every signer before the envelope is allowed to leave, and this is the only group that satisfies that requirement.

Two fill themselves

Date signed, 140 by 24 points, takes the moment that signer submitted and prints it as a short month date. Name, 180 by 24, is filled from the recipient card you already typed when you added them. Neither is offered to the signer as an input, and any value supplied for a date field when the envelope is saved is discarded, which is what makes the printed date evidence rather than a claim.

Five are typed by the signer

Title and company at 180 by 24, email at 200 by 24, text at 180 by 24, and checkbox at 18 points square. The first four arrive labelled except for text, which takes whatever label you give it. Every value in these five comes from the recipient the field is assigned to: the editor has a label box and a Required switch for each field, and no box for a value, so you cannot type an answer in advance. The checkbox is the odd one: the signer types into a small box like any other field, and an X is stamped at that spot whatever they entered.

One is all of them at once

The signature block is a single field that draws a role heading, a signing area with a rule, and up to four labelled lines for name, title, company and date. It starts at 240 by 114 points and its height follows the number of lines you switch on. Where an execution page wants the traditional arrangement, one block is quicker to place and easier to keep straight than five loose fields lined up by eye.

Everything is measured in points

Every size above is in PDF points, the same unit the file itself uses, so a 200 point signature box is a shade over seven centimetres wide on any page. Positions are stored the same way, against the page dimensions read from the file when it was uploaded. All ten can be resized after placement, down to a floor of 12 points, and none of them can be dragged outside the page.

How it works, in three steps

1. Step 1

   Select the recipient first

   Fields belong to whoever is selected, and the colour on the box is the only thing that tells you which person a field is for.

2. Step 2

   Reach for the block before the loose fields

   If you are about to place a signature, a name, a title and a date in a stack, one signature block does all four and keeps them aligned.

3. Step 3

   Set the label and required flag on typed fields

   With a field selected, the panel offers a label shown to the signer and a required switch, which is on by default.

The full walkthrough with screenshots is in the guide Send a PDF for e-signature.

Limits worth knowing

• Ten types, and no way to define your own. There are no dropdowns, radio groups, multi-line boxes or file attachments.
• 500 fields is the ceiling for a single envelope, across every recipient.
• Font size is not adjustable. Values shrink to fit their box, down to a floor of four points.
• Fields cannot be duplicated or copied to another page. Each is placed individually.

Questions people ask

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