By Barbara Krasnoff , a reviews editor who manages how-tos. She’s worked as an editor and writer for almost 40 years. Previously, she was a senior reviews editor for Computerworld.
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These days, more and more official papers are being turned into PDF documents. (PDF stands for Portable Document Format; it is a standard created by Adobe in the early 1990s that allows paper documents to be turned into exact digital copies.) In fact, hard copy paperwork is fast becoming the exception rather than the rule. However, even digital documents have to be signed. You can do it the long way — print those documents out, sign them, and then scan them back into your computer — or you can create a digital signature and place it directly on the PDF.
Windows doesn’t offer a built-in PDF signing feature the way a Mac does. However, you can use Windows’ built-in browser, Microsoft Edge, to sign a PDF document. There are also third-party apps you can download that will give you the same ability.
In this article, I’ll first go over how to use Edge to add a signature, and then I’ll do the same using Adobe Acrobat Reader DC, which is Adobe’s free PDF reader.