Quickest way to convert Word document to pdf and sign it

March 12, 2022 6:39 PM

This is for the Mac (Monterey). I frequently have to sign lots of Microsoft Word documents. I need a Shortcut or some other way to quickly open the word document and convert it to pdf and then sign it in Preview (with my signature in Blue ink). I looked at Automator/Keyboard Maestro options but I really couldn't get it to work. Any suggestions?
posted by dhruva to Computers & Internet (9 answers total)

I would have thought a shell script would be the best way to do this.
posted by turkeyphant at 8:40 PM on March 12, 2022

If it's truly that important, get a standalone Photoshop subscription for $9.99 a month. Cheaper than Acrobat and lets you directly edit even 'locked' PDFs
posted by ananci at 9:37 PM on March 12, 2022

I'm not sure it's possible to automate because the automation would need to be able to recognize where the signature line is before automatically dropping it in. But converting a document to a PDF is trivial on a Mac and requires no extra software. PDF export is built into the operating system, and has been since the early days of Mac OS X. Print to PDF is right there in the Print dialog box.

Is it always the same kind of document? Is the signature line always going to be in the same place, always right there on page 2 or whatever? That might make it less complicated.
posted by emelenjr at 8:02 AM on March 13, 2022

Yeah currently I open the document in word, save to pdf , open it in preview, insert signature and change color of the signature. Then I manually place the signature where it needs to be. I can do the last step manually, but love to automate the preceding ones. Keyboard maestro supposedly records relative position of mouse clicks but I haven't had much success
posted by dhruva at 9:24 AM on March 13, 2022

Consider uploading to a service such as HelloSign, EverSign, PandaDoc, etc. They have free tiers and would get you to the signature step in more or less one go. Also you could create a template to put the signature in the same place every time. Not sure if you can change the color of the signature - I’ve never seen that as a requirement in any legal situation. Do you know if/why blue color is necessary?
posted by danceswithlight at 11:01 AM on March 13, 2022

Shortcut to convert to PDF: right-click on the file, choose “Quick Actions,” choose “Create PDF.” If you select multiple files first and then right-click on one, you can combine them into one PDF. This works on my Mac running Catalina, so Monterey might be slightly different.
posted by danceswithlight at 11:05 AM on March 13, 2022

choose “Quick Actions,” choose “Create PDF.”
This doesn't work on Monterey, but I went a-googlin for quick actions and found this page which works. Now I just have to figure out the signing aspect.
posted by dhruva at 5:06 PM on March 13, 2022

I've taken a photo of my signature on a white background, cropped to a tight fit, and removed the background (in Photoshop or use an online tool like this.

I then save it as an image file PNG format to keep the transparency.

Now any time i need to sign, I drag or copy the PNG file into any Word doc, then just save as a PDF via normal ways. It's the quickest way I've found because all the steps (place signature, position, save as PDF) can be taken care of in 1 'state' or place.
posted by artificialard at 6:16 PM on March 13, 2022

Thanks all, I think artificialard's method may be the easiest.
posted by dhruva at 6:40 PM on March 14, 2022