Securing Your Signature

Written by Allen Wyatt (last updated January 1, 2024)
This tip applies to Word 2007, 2010, 2013, 2016, 2019, and Word in Microsoft 365


2

Len often uses Word to send letters and he usually pastes a scanned copy of his signature into the document. He worries, however, that it can be deleted or misused, so he wonders if there is a way to paste it into the document (it's a JPG file) and have it secured in some way.

The short answer is that there is no way to protect your signature (or any other graphics file) that you place in your document. There are, however, several things you can do to make it more difficult to use. For instance, you could protect the document by restricting editing. (To start, display the Review tab of the ribbon and click the Restrict Editing tool.) You could also save your document out in PDF format, which would stop the individual signature image from being selected.

The reason that you can't get absolute protection, of course, is that if you can see the image it can be grabbed, in some way or another, and saved electronically. It is rather trivial to grab a screen shot of the signature and then crop it down in a different graphics editing program. (This approach doesn't care whether you are using a Word document or a PDF document—both are just as easy to grab.)

The only way to stop your signature from potentially being misused is to not include your signature in the document. This isn't as flippant a suggestion as it sounds. For instance, you might use a "modified" signature in the document, such as only your first name instead of your full signature. You might also find a handwriting font and type your name in using the font. This gives a nice decorative touch, but it doesn't include your actual signature.

For more important documents where the receiver needs to be sure that the document came from you, you might consider forgoing the graphic signature and, instead, use a digital signature. Digital signatures have been available for e-mail messages for years. (You can do an Internet search to find tons of information about digital e-mail signatures.) Word, however, also offers digital signatures for your documents. Here's an article at Microsoft's site that discusses it in more detail:

https://support.office.com/en-us/article/Add-or-remove-a-digital-signature-in-Office-files-70D26DC9-BE10-46F1-8EFA-719C8B3F1A2D

Even though the article was written specifically for Word 2007, its contents also apply to later versions of Word.

WordTips is your source for cost-effective Microsoft Word training. (Microsoft Word is the most popular word processing software in the world.) This tip (12499) applies to Microsoft Word 2007, 2010, 2013, 2016, 2019, and Word in Microsoft 365.

Author Bio

Allen Wyatt

With more than 50 non-fiction books and numerous magazine articles to his credit, Allen Wyatt is an internationally recognized author. He is president of Sharon Parq Associates, a computer and publishing services company. ...

MORE FROM ALLEN

Understanding the If ... End If Structure

One of the powerful programming structures provided in VBA allows you to conditionally execute commands. The If ... End ...

Discover More

Setting Vertical Alignment

Excel allows you to adjust not only the horizontal alignment of values in a cell, but also the vertical alignment. This ...

Discover More

Turning Off the Check for Repeated Words

If your work involves the usage of repeated words, you may be interested in configuring Word so it doesn't flag those ...

Discover More

The First and Last Word on Word! Bestselling For Dummies author Dan Gookin puts his usual fun and friendly candor back to work to show you how to navigate Word 2013. Spend more time working and less time trying to figure it all out! Check out Word 2013 For Dummies today!

More WordTips (ribbon)

Nudging a Graphic

If you need to move a graphic just a little bit in one direction or another, you can do so by using the techniques in ...

Discover More

Editing Wrap Points

If you have a graphic that has text wrapping around it, you might want a way to modify the wrapping path used by Word. ...

Discover More

Automatically Formatting Graphics and Shapes

Want to change the graphics formatting defaults in Word? You can customize some of these defaults, saving yourself some time.

Discover More
Subscribe

FREE SERVICE: Get tips like this every week in WordTips, a free productivity newsletter. Enter your address and click "Subscribe."

View most recent newsletter.

Comments

If you would like to add an image to your comment (not an avatar, but an image to help in making the point of your comment), include the characters [{fig}] (all 7 characters, in the sequence shown) in your comment text. You’ll be prompted to upload your image when you submit the comment. Maximum image size is 6Mpixels. Images larger than 600px wide or 1000px tall will be reduced. Up to three images may be included in a comment. All images are subject to review. Commenting privileges may be curtailed if inappropriate images are posted.

What is 6 - 0?

2024-01-01 05:54:39

Dr. Bartolo

In the fourth paragraph the tip says that "The only way to stop your signature from potentially being misused is to not include your signature in the document." Correct. But all the suggestions that follow in that paragraph are also in fact signatures. A signature is (a) a mark you make which (b) you use intending it to authenticate a document. So the only foolproof solution to the problem identified here is not to sign at all.

Note that in some places (England is one) an email in which you prjnt your name is signed by you, and so is an email in which your name is added by using an automatically generated signature block which includes your printed name, so long as you also mean, in each case, to authenticate the contents of the email and/or any attachment (and you always taken to mean that unless you expressly say you do not!). There are many other ways of signing too.

The digital signature route is all about security, not what a signature is. If you think about it, a "wet" signature (one in old fashioned ink) is just as liable to be copied and used by a graphics program as an image copied from a Word document (as discussed in this tip), so a true digital signature ends up being much more secure than any other sort of signature. The Microsoft suggestion is one way to go, but not a particularly secure one. There are many more solutions out there.

All in all, the sooner in the digital space the world gets around to ditching all but truly secure, universally recognised, digital signatures the better, but that has been a dream for over 20 years and there is no sign of it happening any time soon.


2019-04-01 06:02:06

Patric Verhaeghe

There is indeed a risc of misuse. I have don't it before, using a doc convert to PDF. In that case I make sure that the graphic isgoining over some printed text. That way it is more difficult to grab only the signature.
But of course that does not give 100% secutity eighter


This Site

Got a version of Word that uses the ribbon interface (Word 2007 or later)? This site is for you! If you use an earlier version of Word, visit our WordTips site focusing on the menu interface.

Videos
Subscribe

FREE SERVICE: Get tips like this every week in WordTips, a free productivity newsletter. Enter your address and click "Subscribe."

(Your e-mail address is not shared with anyone, ever.)

View the most recent newsletter.