Fillable fields for signers

Four named boxes and one free one

Name, Email, Title and Company are single line boxes that arrive already labelled, so the signer sees what belongs there without you writing anything. Text is the general case: give it your own label and it becomes whatever you need, a reference number, a vehicle registration, a room number. All five are 24 points tall and between 180 and 200 wide by default, which suits a printed rule.

The confirmation box

The checkbox field is worth understanding before you use it, because it does not behave like a web tick box. It is a small box, 18 points square by default, that the signer fills in like any other field. Whatever they put in it, an X is stamped onto the page at that spot. So it is a confirmation mark rather than a true or false control, and it reads best placed directly against the clause it confirms, with the clause itself written in the document.

Required is checked twice

Every field has a Required switch, on by default. In the signer's browser the bottom bar names whichever required box is still empty, so they are told what is missing rather than being left to hunt. The same check runs again when the submission arrives, quoting the field's label. Turning Required off makes a box genuinely optional, which is the right choice for a middle name or an order reference that may not exist yet.

You can fill one in for them

A text, email, title or company field can carry a value you supply when you prepare the envelope. Where a value is already present, the signer is shown it as printed text rather than an editable box. That is how you state something on the page without inviting the other party to change it: a contract number you have already allocated, or a company name you are not asking them to retype.

How the values are printed

Each value is drawn onto the page at the position you placed, with a thin rule underneath, and shrinks in quarter point steps down to a floor of four points until it fits the width. Long values get smaller rather than running past the edge of their box or wrapping onto the following line, which keeps a filled document looking like a form rather than a mess.

How it works, in three steps

1. Step 1

   Drop the field where the printed line is

   Text, Checkbox, Name, Email, Title and Company all sit in the palette. Place them for whichever signer is currently selected, and make a checkbox a little larger than 18 points if you want it easy to hit.

2. Step 2

   Give a text field a label

   With it selected, the Field label box sets what the signer is shown. Purchase order number reads better than Text.

3. Step 3

   Decide what is compulsory

   Leave Required on for anything you genuinely need, and switch it off for the rest, so the signer is only blocked by things that matter.

Limits worth knowing

• A typed value is capped at 500 characters, and a label at 120.
• There are no dropdowns, radio groups or multi-line boxes. Every field is a single line.
• A checkbox is filled in like a text box rather than ticked, always stamps an X whatever was entered, and has no grouping, so mutually exclusive options are not enforced.
• Values are not validated by type. An email field accepts whatever is typed into it.

Questions people ask

Related pages