Digital signatures on PDFs

Question

Sorry if I am posting this question in the wrong location, but hopefully someone who sees this message will be able to answer or point me in the right direction. I did perform a search and could not find a definitive answer.
There are documents in my company that will be circulated for approval and we would like to apply digital signatures to indicate that certain personnel have reviewed/approved these documents. I have the capability with Acrobat 3D version 8.1.5 to add digital signatures to a PDF. My question is: Is that true of all versions of Acrobat? If not, can anyone tell me the most recent version of Acrobat that has this capability or how I might find this out. I won't necessarily be the one creating the PDFs; thus, the question. Also, is there a better practice for indicating review/approval of a document?
Janice

Answer 1

Hi Janice,
First thing, the comment above is incorrect. You can most certainly add multiple signatures to a single PDF file, and one signature does not invalidate the next.
Onto your question; if you want to author the document with existing signature fields in a specific location you need Acrobat. However, once the fields exist you can “Reader enable” the document so the signature field can be signed using either Acrobat or Reader. If the file has been Reader enabled, then the user can create (place) a signature field wherever they like.
The ability to add signature fields has been in Acrobat since version 4 when digital signatures were introduced. The ability to sign using Reader has been around since version 5.1 (there was no 5.1 of Acrobat, only Reader). The ability for Acrobat to “Reader enable” a document for signing has been there since version 8.0.
Does this answer your question?
Steve