Signing PDFs for Remote Rural Clients of Behaviour Support and Counselling

Hi there, we have found the increase in telehealth usage not surprising during the Covid-19 situation. Though we now offer telehealth as our core business, we also are learning new ways to make small things a bit easier. Like signing a PDF document?

How many times do you get a doc from a provider or therapist, they want you to sign it and send it back. No way! You either need to print the document, sign with pen, and then either scan it in – which means the printer needs to function as a scanner – which means it needs to be connected to a computer lap top or desk top – which means now you need your phone, a computer, a printer, and a scanner included – need we continue???

Or you do what many do, take a picture. Make sure you get day light. It may look clean but once the picture is sent on phone to the recipient and they open the picture, it can appear dark and difficult to read.

We’ve not addressed all these problems. But we did figure out how to sign a document with PDF Preview on a Mac (on Mac, tho the PC option is likely a similar principle… we hope…).

In your Mac PDF Preview app, go to tools, then annotate, then signature and choose manage signature.

In the manage signature window, it shows a trackpad area. Click on this and use your trackpad to sign your name with your finger. We found you need to put your finger on the pad before you begin the movement, otherwise the pad does not seem to pick up on the full movement of the finger.

When you do your thing, hit the return key, then click Done. Your signature is saved in the program and can be found in the options in the tool bar just above the document screen.

Now all you need to do is click on, drag to your PDF and the signature will appear in an expandable box. You grab one of the corners to change size and then all you do, when you have it where you want, is to save the PDF. Your signature is installed. You can then send the document back to whoever needs your signed document.

This is useful for a Word document as well – as you can save the document as a PDF and use this approach. But there are ways to create a signature picture you can keep on file to plunk into a Word doc as well. That is a topic for another day… by the way we don’t get into these tech issues much. This post is probably a one-off to help some clients figure out how to sign a PDF for free. Yeah there are programs out there that charge monthly fees to do what most computers do now. Even some newer phones are claimed to do these bits within their programs or apps…….. we might get the courage to look into that one too one day!

All the best.