Sign Paperwork on your Android or iPhone

Adobe Reader now has eSignature capability. This applies to their desktop program and mobile apps, but the real point is this: now on your tablet or smartphone you can mark up a document. You can add comments, draw over it, highlight or underline or strikethrough text, or sign it.

After you add text markup, you can move what you added, change the color, or delete markup you added. It’s saved as you add each signature/drawing/etc., so you may want to make a copy of the file before you open it in Reader.

What are the possibilities for this tool? Most of them seem geared for taking notes—highlighting text when studying a document, for example—but there are collaboration possibilities as well. You can add comments and other markup to a document and send it on to another team member.

What I’m most excited about are the signature possibilities. If you need to get a signature from someone remotely, I recommend using your desktop computer, signing up for an account with Adobe’s EchoSign, then use that tool to email someone the PDF. They, on their computer, can “sign” it with a drawn signature, or e-sign it by verifying an online account, such as Google or Facebook. Unfortunately, it doesn’t seem to integrate well with mobile. Still, this is a great development. The statement by an Adobe VP, that “With today’s release, the days of printing, signing and faxing back documents are truly numbered” is a promising one.

For face-to-face transactions, you can simply copy off a PDF contract you wish to use, open it in Adobe Reader, have the subject sign it, then save it—then you could email it to them, or save it to DropBox or EverNote. Quick and clean, with no printing or scanning required.

Someone could even email you a PDF over lunch, with the expectation that you would print it out, sign it and carry it to them—and in a matter of minutes you could open it, sign it and email it back instead!

See the screencast where I walk through how to use Adobe Reader on an Android: