Good morning, all. I spent a while over the last two weeks or so learning about some more of Adobe Acrobat's features, particularly the e-sign function. After wrestling with it for a bit, I stinkin' love it. It's been perfect for my application for a week or so now.

Example: I have a set of operator instructions for a particular process, and I want to update it. Updates require signatures from representatives of three different departments. I go to the last page of the Word document, add a 1-row by 3-column table and leave the cells empty. Then I convert the document to PDF, and use Acrobat's e-sign feature to request e-signatures. Software walks me through adding three email addresses and names, and placing "fields" inside those cells. The next step is essentially "send," where the document gets emailed to the three named parties. Once each of them has e-signed, the document (with e-signatures and a summary sheet) comes back to me. I file it on the network, and all is well.

Heck, I can even set a duration in Acrobat (a week, for instance), after which the system will "nag" the recipients if they haven't signed it yet. This is all great, because I don't have to print documents and chase people for signatures, I don't have to scan signed documents back in, and I don't have to do the nagging when people postpone signing things. It's been a "yuge" time saver for me this past week. It's like McDonalds, man, "I'm lovin' it."

- - -

Today brings a new challenge. I've been handed a pre-existing form (created in Excel) and asked to put it through this process. The form isn't all that complex, so I recreated it in Word (because I'm now somewhat better versed in Word/Acrobat usage). Then I found an article at Microsoft on creating a form in Word that users can complete or print. Nice!

Using this method, I can almost eliminate the need to go to PDF with it. I can lock down the form in Word, so only the fields and check boxes and such are changeable. Sweet! But doing so, I lose the distribution capability Acrobat brought me. Dangit!

So. Adding three boxes for e-signatures was easy. Adding all the other stuff in this original form has made it a lot more complex. I'm not clear yet on how to add the variety of fields to the Acrobat document without it being a really tedious process. I've got more learning to do, but I've reached the point where I want to ask for help before I lose more hair doing this the hard way.

Anybody here working with a similar situation? I'd sure like to tap into some existing knowledge.

Thank you!

I would suggest trying Grok AI if no one here has direct experience.

Ooh! AI!

That's another one for the rant section. I'll write that later.

If it is a Microsoft product, use CoPilot AI and you should get your answer.