How to Sign a Document Electronically

Applies to: DocuSign, Adobe Acrobat Sign; Microsoft Word (Microsoft 365, Word 2021, Word 2019); Windows, macOS, iOS, Android
Article Type: How-To
Last Updated: 2026-07-29

Summary

This guide covers the full e-signature workflow: signing a document someone sent you from a computer or a phone, sending a document out for signature with fields and a signing order, and keeping the audit certificate that proves who signed and when. It also explains which of the three kinds of signature fits which job.

Prerequisites

• For signing a document sent to you: the request email and a web browser. No account or licence needed.
• For sending documents out for signature: a licence for your organization's e-signature service, assigned to your account.
• For a Word signature line: the Word desktop app and the document saved in .docx format.

Instructions

1. Choose the Right Kind of Signature

The word "signature" covers three different things, and picking the wrong one is what causes a document to come back rejected.

• A drawn image of your signature. You draw or paste a picture of your name onto the page. It carries no record of who drew it or when, so it works for internal forms, delivery acknowledgements, and anything where nobody will ever dispute the signing. If that is all you need, How to Manage PDF Files — Combine, Sign, Annotate, and Compress shows you how to draw one straight onto a PDF in Microsoft Edge in about 30 seconds.
• An electronic signature with an audit trail. Services such as DocuSign and Adobe Acrobat Sign verify the signer's email address, record the time, date, and IP address of every action, lock the document once signing completes, and issue a certificate listing all of it. This is what contracts, offer letters, NDAs, statements of work, and supplier agreements normally use.
• A digital signature backed by a certificate. A certificate issued to you or your organization is embedded in the file itself. Any later change to the document invalidates it, which makes tampering visible to anyone who opens the file. Regulated filings, some government submissions, and documents that must prove their own integrity call for this one. Your organization has to issue the certificate — you cannot create one yourself.

Note: Check which e-signature service your organization already uses before you sign up for another one. Most organizations standardise on a single service, licences are usually per sender rather than per signer, and a second tool splits your audit records across two systems that nobody thinks to search later. Ask IT for the approved tool and a sender licence in one message: "Which e-signature service is approved here, and can you assign me a sender licence?"

2. Sign a Document Someone Sent You

This is the most common task by a wide margin, and it costs nothing. The steps below use DocuSign labels, with Adobe Acrobat Sign differences noted.

1. Open the request email. The subject line reads something like Please DocuSign: Supplier Agreement or Signature requested on Supplier Agreement, and the sender's name appears alongside the service name.
2. Confirm you were expecting this document and that the sender's name is right before you click anything. Fake signature requests are a common phishing pattern precisely because real ones look urgent.
3. Click Review Document (DocuSign) or Review and sign (Adobe Acrobat Sign). The document opens in your browser. No sign-in and no account are required.
4. Tick the box reading I agree to use electronic records and signatures at the top of the page, then click Continue. Some buttons render in capitals — the label text is what matters.
5. Click Start. A yellow tab labelled Start sits at the left edge of the page and jumps you to the first field that needs your input.
6. Fill any text fields, dates, or checkboxes as you reach them. Fields marked Required must be completed before the document can be submitted.
7. Click the yellow Sign tag when you reach it. A dialog titled Adopt Your Signature opens.
8. Type your full name and initials in the boxes at the top, then pick how the signature looks:
   • Select style — choose one of the ready-made handwriting styles. Fastest option.
   • Draw — draw your signature with the mouse, trackpad, or touchscreen.
   • Upload — upload an image of your handwritten signature.
9. Click Adopt and Sign. The dialog closes and your signature appears in the field. The yellow tab moves to the next item.
10. Keep clicking Next until every tagged field is complete. The tab changes from Next to Finish when nothing is outstanding.
11. Click Finish at the top of the page.

Verification: A confirmation page appears offering Download and Print. The document is now locked against editing on your side. When every signer has finished, the completed PDF arrives in your inbox automatically.

Tip: Read before you sign, not after. Once you click Finish the document is sealed, and correcting a mistake means the sender voids the whole envelope and starts again — which is visible to every other signer in the audit trail.

3. Sign From Your Phone

Signing on a phone is often better than on a laptop, because drawing a signature with a fingertip looks far more like your handwriting than dragging a mouse does.

1. Open the request email in your phone's mail app and tap Review Document. The signing page opens in the phone browser in a layout built for a small screen.
2. Turn the phone sideways into landscape. You get a wider view of the page and a much larger area to draw in.
3. Tap the yellow arrow or Start to jump to the first field. The page scrolls and zooms to each field for you.
4. Tap the Sign field, then draw your signature with a fingertip in the panel that slides up from the bottom. Tap Clear and redraw as many times as you want before accepting it.
5. Tap Adopt and Sign, work through the remaining fields, then tap Finish.

Note: The DocuSign and Adobe Acrobat Reader mobile apps do the same job and add document storage and offline signing. The browser route needs no install, so use it when you are signing one document and moving on.

4. Send a Document for Signature

Sending requires a licence assigned to your account. If the send option is missing or greyed out, that is what is absent — see the Troubleshooting table below for the exact wording to send IT.

1. Save your document as a PDF first. Word, Excel, and PowerPoint files convert on upload, but converting yourself means you see exactly what the recipient will see. How to Save or Print Any Document as a PDF covers this in a few clicks.
2. Sign in to the service and click Start > Send an Envelope (DocuSign) or Request e-signatures (Adobe Acrobat Sign).
3. Click Upload and select your file. The filename appears in the documents list.
4. Under Add recipients, enter each person's full name and email address.
5. Set each recipient's role in the dropdown beside their name:
   • Needs to Sign — they must apply a signature.
   • Receives a Copy — they get the completed document, no action needed.
   • Needs to View — they must open it, without signing.
6. Add a subject line and a short message. A message naming the document and the deadline gets signed considerably faster than the default text.
7. Click Next. The document opens in the field editor with a recipient list at the top left, each recipient colour-coded.
8. Select a recipient in that list, then drag fields from the left panel onto the page for that person:
   • Signature — where they sign.
   • Date Signed — fills in automatically when they sign.
   • Initial — for initialling individual pages or clauses.
   • Name, Title, Company — auto-filled from their details.
   • Text — anything they type themselves.
9. Switch to the next recipient in the list and place their fields. Each field takes the colour of the recipient it belongs to.
10. Click Send. Every recipient receives their email, and the envelope appears in your Sent list with a live status.

The mistake everyone makes once: placing all the fields while a single recipient is selected, so one person is asked to sign on everyone's behalf. Before clicking Send, click through each name in the recipient list and confirm the highlighted fields on the page match that person's colour.

5. Set the Signing Order for Multiple Signers

By default every recipient receives the document at the same moment. That works when the signers are independent, and breaks the moment one person's approval has to come before another's.

1. On the recipients screen, turn on Set signing order. A numbered box appears to the left of each recipient.
2. Number the recipients in the order they act. Recipient 1 receives the email immediately; recipient 2 receives nothing until recipient 1 finishes.
3. Give two recipients the same number when they can sign in parallel. Both are emailed at once, and the next number waits for both.
4. Add yourself as the last recipient with the role Receives a Copy if you are not signing. The completed document and certificate land in your inbox the moment the last signature is applied.
5. Check the routing diagram beside the list. It draws the order out visually, which catches a mis-numbered recipient before you send rather than after.

Tip: Put the internal approver before the external party. Sending a client a contract that your own finance lead has not approved yet is the one sequencing error that costs real credibility.

6. Save the Signed Copy and the Audit Certificate

When the last person signs, the service emails everyone the completed document. A second file travels with it — DocuSign calls it the Certificate of Completion, Adobe Acrobat Sign calls it the audit report — and it is the part people throw away and later need.

The certificate records:

• The unique envelope or agreement ID.
• Every signer's name and email address as entered by the sender.
• Timestamps for when the document was sent, viewed, and signed by each person.
• The IP address each action came from.
• How each signature was applied — selected style, drawn, or uploaded.
• A checksum of the document, which is what proves the file has not been altered since completion.

To download both files together:

1. Open the completed envelope in the service, or open the completion email.
2. Click Download. A dialog lists the available documents.
3. Tick both the document and Certificate of Completion, then click Download.
4. Save both into the folder where the contract lives — a SharePoint document library or the OneDrive folder for that client — rather than leaving them in your mailbox. Mailboxes get archived, and the certificate is exactly the file someone asks for eighteen months later.

Note: The signing service keeps its own copy, but access to it depends on the sender's account still existing and still being licensed. Your saved copy does not. Save both files.

7. Use a Word Signature Line for Internal Approvals

For approvals that never leave the organization — a policy sign-off, an internal change request, an expense form — a signature line inside the Word document is quicker than routing an envelope.

1. Save the document in .docx format. The signature line option is unavailable in the older .doc format.
2. Place your cursor where the signature belongs.
3. Go to the Insert tab, and in the Text group on the right, click Signature Line.
4. Fill in the Signature Setup dialog: Suggested signer, Suggested signer's title, and Suggested signer's email address.
5. Click OK. A signature block appears with an X, a horizontal rule, and the signer's name and title beneath it.
6. Send the document to the signer. They double-click the line, type their name or select a signature image, and click Sign.

If your organization issues signing certificates, Word attaches one at that point, marks the document as final, and shows a Signatures pane confirming the signature is valid. Any subsequent edit invalidates it visibly. Without a certificate, the line records a typed name and nothing more — which is fine internally and carries no weight with an outside party.

How to Insert a Signature Line or Checkbox in Word covers the same feature alongside fillable checkboxes and form fields if you are building an approval form rather than signing one.

Troubleshooting

WARNING

Whether an electronic signature is enforceable depends on the country, the type of document, and sometimes the industry — and certain documents still require a handwritten signature on paper. Nothing here is legal advice. Read your organization's signature policy before you sign or send anything outside routine business paperwork, and ask your legal contact when a document is unusual, high-value, or crosses a border.

Symptom / Error	Potential Cause	Solution
Signature fields will not accept a click	Not your turn in the signing order	A numbered signing order releases the document one signer at a time. Ask the sender to confirm your position, or wait for the notification email that says it is your turn. See Step 5.
The request email never arrived	Filtered as junk or quarantined	Check your Junk Email folder and search your mailbox for the sender's name. If nothing is there, ask the sender to resend and to confirm the address they used matches your work email exactly.
The Finish button never appears	Required fields still empty	Click the yellow Next tab at the left edge — it jumps straight to the first incomplete required field. Repeat until the tab reads Finish.
The send option is missing or greyed out	No sender licence on your account	Tell IT: "Please assign me an e-signature sender licence for our approved service." Signing documents sent to you stays free and needs no licence.
"You do not have access to this service" in Adobe	Licence not assigned or expired	See Fix "You do not have access to this service" in Adobe for the sign-out and licence checks that resolve it.
Signature Line is greyed out in Word	Document is in compatibility mode	Go to File > Save As, set the file type to Word Document (*.docx), and save. The option becomes available immediately.
The signed PDF arrived without a certificate	Certificate not selected on download	Open the completed envelope, click Download, tick Certificate of Completion alongside the document, and download again. See Step 6.

Related Articles

• How to Manage PDF Files — Combine, Sign, Annotate, and Compress
• How to Insert a Signature Line or Checkbox in Word
• How to Save or Print Any Document as a PDF
• How to Convert a Word Document to PDF (and Back)
• Understanding Adobe Licensing and Common Access Issues
• Fix "You do not have access to this service" in Adobe
• How to Securely Share Files with Clients in Microsoft 365

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