Modifying a document after sending

Learn how to modify a document that’s already been sent out for signature–like when the wrong document is sent out by mistake. Modifying agreements can only be used on documents that meet the following criteria:

  • The document has not been signed, approved, or delegated
  • The document does not include a digital signature or written signature
  • The document has not been initiated from a custom workflow
NOTE
Modifying a document after sending is only available for enterprise-level plans. Your Acrobat Sign administrator needs to enable Modify Agreements in the Send Settings section of the Account Settings to use this feature.
Transcript
If you forgot to add information or perhaps sent the wrong document out for signature, you can modify the transaction instead of canceling it and starting over. You can modify agreements to add, delete, replace, reorder documents and/or form fields. Modifying agreements can only be used on documents that meet the following criteria: the document has not been signed, approved, or delegated, the document does not include a digital signature or written signature, and the document has not been initiated from a custom workflow.
If you realize you’ve made a mistake right away, no need to panic because you can select Modify Agreement right on the confirmation page. When you select this link, you’re taken to the Send page with limited options as you can see from the information banner at the top, areas that you don’t have access to or grayed out. If you realize there’s a problem hours or days later, just go to the Manage page and select the document. If changes can be made, Modify Agreement appears in the right hand pane. If you don’t see the command, then no changes can be made. When you select Modify Agreement, you are also taken to the same Send page with limited options we saw earlier. You can make modifications such as adding, deleting, replacing, reordering, and/or adding form fields. I’m going to add a second document to this transaction that needs signing. Once it’s uploaded, I’ll go ahead and check preview and add signature fields to add the fields I need to the new word document.
Once you select Next, you’ll see the original document appear, and if you move down to the second page, here’s the new document that needs form fields. I’ll go ahead and quickly add these. And then when you select Update, the confirmation page again appears. Switching gears, let’s take a look at what the signer experiences when you modify an agreement. First of all, the signer only receives one email so they just follow the usual process of selecting on the link in the email, and then they’ll see this notification indicating that the agreement has been modified. This allows the signer to know that they should carefully review the document because it has been modified after it was initially sent. So once they click OK, they can go ahead and complete and sign the document as usual, which I’ll just go ahead and speed through. An important point to note here is that if the agreement is modified while the signer is actually reviewing the document, when they click to sign, they’ll get a message saying that the agreement has been modified and then they’ll refresh the page to review any changes and complete the signing process. Now, let’s take a look at what the audit trail looks like for this on the Manage page. When you select the document under Activity, you can see very clearly that it specifies when the document was modified, viewed, acknowledged, and when the final signing occurred. You can also find the same detailed history when you open the PDF audit report. So next time you realize that you’ve forgotten some type of information on a document that’s been sent out for signature, don’t panic and cancel the transaction. Instead, use the Modify Agreement command to make any necessary modifications. -
TIP
This video is part of the course Advanced Tasks for Users that is available for free on Experience League!
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