Help guides

The document editor

On Solo and up, SignSwifly has a document editor in your browser that works much as Word does. Write a document from scratch or open a Word file, change it, put the places to sign straight into the text, and send it for signing. Documents can be saved for your workspace, with their last versions kept, and downloaded as Word or PDF. On the Free plan, Document editor and PDF editor in the menu, and Write a document, show a padlock: upload a finished Word or PDF file instead. A Word file is converted to a fixed PDF, and field tags typed in it stay on the page as typed rather than becoming fields.

Use a computer or tablet: on a phone the page says Use a computer or tablet to edit documents.

New to the editor? Templates and the document editor, start to finish walks through the whole journey, from writing a document to making it a template and sending it.

Write or open a document

  1. Choose Document editor in the menu, then New document; or choose Write a document on the dashboard, under Send & Sign or Templates, or on the first step of a new envelope.
  2. Start typing, or choose Open a Word file to open a .docx, .doc or .rtf from your computer. A .doc or .rtf is turned into a .docx as it opens, and the page says so. A PDF can’t be opened here: see The PDF editor.
  3. Edit much as in Word: headings, bold, italic and underline, lists that renumber themselves, tables, pictures, links, headers and footers, page numbers and footnotes. In the document, Tab types a tab; to move on with the keyboard, press Escape and then Tab, or Escape and then Shift+Tab to go back.

Fonts

The editor offers five fonts: Calibri, Cambria, Arial, Times New Roman and Courier New. They’re drawn on your screen and in the PDF with free fonts of exactly the same widths, so lines break where Word breaks them. A file in any other font is shown in the nearest of the five, and the page tells you which (for example “Aptos was shown as Calibri”). Line breaks on screen can still differ a little from the PDF; the PDF shown before you send is the one that is signed.

Pasting from other programs

Text you paste from Word, Google Docs, a web page or another program keeps its formatting: bold, italic and underline, headings, lists (numbered 1, 2, 3, a, b, c or i, ii, iii, as they were), tables and their borders, tabs and spaces, links to web pages and email addresses, and pictures that are in what you copied. Its fonts are shown in the nearest of the five, without a note each time. Comments aren’t brought in. Accept or reject any tracked changes before you copy: something copied with tracked changes isn’t pasted at all, not even as plain text, so that words or pictures they delete can’t come back. A picture that what you copied only links to, as most pictures on a web page and in Google Docs are, isn’t brought in: copy the picture on its own and paste it (on a web page, right-click it and choose Copy image), or add it with the toolbar’s Image button. To keep its formatting, what you paste is read by SignSwifly’s server, in Australia, and not kept there; it goes in where you pasted it, a moment later. If it can’t be read that way (more than 2 MB, or more than 10 pictures or 1 MB of them, say), it’s pasted as plain text, and the line under the buttons says why; to paste it again with its formatting, undo the plain text first. Something you copy within the editor is pasted as it is, without the server. Paste with Ctrl+V (Cmd+V on a Mac): the right-click menu’s Paste doesn’t paste, and says to press those keys instead.

Spell check

The editor checks your spelling in Australian English as you type or paste, so “colour” and “organise” are right and “color” isn’t. A word it doesn’t know is underlined in red: right-click it and choose the word you meant, or Ignore Once or Ignore All. When there are more than three suggestions, the rest and Add to Dictionary are under More Suggestion. Ignore All and Add to Dictionary last until you close the document or open another: SignSwifly doesn’t keep a list of your words. It knows the words Australian contracts use, such as Pty, ABN, GST, Cth, e.g., annexure and licensor, and takes a word in capitals of up to five letters as an abbreviation. Field tags, variables, and email and web addresses aren’t checked. If spell check can’t reach SignSwifly for a moment, it checks the page again within about 15 seconds, or up to 2 minutes if SignSwifly is busy. To hide the red lines for now, choose Spelling at the bottom of the editor, then Spell Check.

To check a page, the editor sends its words to SignSwifly in Australia, and nowhere else. Nothing you type is kept or recorded.

What the editor shows a file without

Some things in a Word file don’t survive the browser editor, such as text in some shapes. An embedded spreadsheet or other object is kept as its picture, and a field such as DATE keeps what it last showed; the page says so. When you open such a file, a line under the buttons says what the editor shows the document without. Your original file isn’t changed. Where it’s layout alone (drawn shapes and text boxes, section breaks, columns, Word fields), the line only tells you. Where content would be left out of a save (a table or its rows, a picture, a chart, an equation, a footnote or endnote, or a template’s variables, field tags and optional clauses), you’re asked before you save, send or make a PDF, once, with the choice to cancel and send the original instead: add the file to an envelope as it is, where it’s converted to a PDF whole.

A file the editor refuses says why: a password-protected file, a macro-enabled one (.docm), one with tracked changes (accept or reject them in Word first), or one past the limits: more than 10 pictures or 1 MB of them, a picture over 2.2 megapixels, more than 2,000 table cells in all its tables, 4,000 paragraphs, 300,000 characters, 10,000 characters in one paragraph, or 500 pages. A phone photo is past them: make it smaller in Word first. Split a long document into smaller ones in Word.

Save, and the versions kept

  • Save asks for a name the first time; after that each save is the document’s next version. Save as… makes a copy of its own under a new name.
  • Saved documents are shared with everyone in your workspace, under Document editor in the menu: open, download as Word, send for signing, rename or delete them there. A workspace can keep 200, and 1 GB in all, with every version counted.
  • Each document keeps its last 10 versions. Versions lists who saved each and when; any of them can be opened read-only, downloaded, or put back as the newest. Nothing is ever written over: putting a version back makes a new one.
  • If someone else saved the document while you had it open, your save is refused and says who and when, and you’re offered to save yours as a new document, so both are kept. Or download yours as Word.
  • Nothing is kept until you save: a document you only wrote and downloaded isn’t stored anywhere. Closing the tab or going to another page doesn’t ask first, so save or download before you leave.

Deleting a saved document deletes every version of it, for good. See Keeping and deleting documents.

Finding one, and deleting several

Once your workspace keeps 20 or more saved documents, Search saved documents above the list finds them as you type, by name or by who saved them last. Capitals and accents don’t matter: “resume” finds “Résumé”.

To delete several at once, tick the box beside each one, or tick Select all shown for every document the search is showing, then choose Delete selected. You’re asked once, with each document named. If someone has saved a newer version of a document than the one you ticked, it isn’t deleted: the page says which and who saved it, and unticks it, so pressing Delete selected again leaves their version be. Its row shows the newer version: tick it again if it should still go. The others are deleted. If SignSwifly stops partway through, the ones it didn’t reach stay ticked: try again in a minute. If the list can’t be loaded again afterwards, the page says it may be out of date: reload the page to see the newest versions, then tick again any that should still go. Clear selection unticks them all.

Download as Word or PDF

Download Word (.docx) saves the document to your computer; it’s made in your browser. Download PDF makes a PDF on the server, in the same fonts the signed PDF will use, and sends it to you without keeping it.

Send for signing

  1. Where a signature, initials, date or name goes, type a field tag in the text, such as [[Signature:signer1]], [[Initials:signer2]], [[DateSigned:signer1]] or [[SignerName:signer1]]: signer1 is the first person who signs, signer2 the second, and so on. A tag with any other name starts as the first signer’s.
  2. Choose Send for signing. A draft envelope is made with the document, and the send wizard opens on it. If a saved document has changes, you’re asked to save them first, since what’s sent is the document as saved; Cancel sends nothing.
  3. Add the people who sign. The wizard then says This document has field tags and offers a field for each tag, placed where the tag was written; each row says which person it’s for, and you can change any. The tags themselves are taken out of the PDF the signers see.
  4. Check the PDF on the review step, which is exactly what will be signed, and send. The audit trail records that the envelope came from the document editor, or from which saved document and version.

A Word document on a draft envelope

On Solo and up, a Word file added to an envelope through the app (uploaded, picked from OneDrive or SharePoint on Scale, or made from a template) keeps its Word file until the envelope is sent, and its card says Word document. On its menu:

  • Edit wording opens it in the document editor. Saving draws the PDF again. A field from a field tag goes to where its tag is now, and any other field follows the words beside it. One that can’t find its place stays where it was, and the envelope lists it under Check these fields for you to move.
  • Edit content is the PDF editor, which draws over the PDF. Once you save there, the document is a PDF, and Edit wording is no longer offered for it; the page says so before it opens.
  • Replace file with another Word file sets a new one; with a PDF, the Word file is dropped.

A Word file too large to keep as an editable document (past the limits above) is added as a fixed PDF, converted as on every plan, and the page says why. Word files sent through the API are always converted to PDF, and their tags aren’t turned into fields.

Templates

A template made from a Word file keeps its Word file too, and its wording is edited the same way, with variables in the text and optional clauses. See Templates: Word templates.

What the editor doesn’t do

  • It doesn’t edit PDFs. A PDF’s text can’t be edited as text; the PDF editor adds over the page instead, and a Word file dropped on the PDF editor opens here.
  • Some scripts can’t yet be made into a PDF from a Word file: Arabic, Syriac, Hindi and the other Indian scripts, Sinhala, Thai, Lao, Khmer, Myanmar, Tibetan, Mongolian and a few others. You can still open and edit such a document here, and the page says so, but to send it, save it as a PDF in Word and upload that. A Word file with such text uploaded to an envelope is converted as it was before, and its wording can’t be edited here.
  • It isn’t designed for phones, and with a screen reader it reads out text you select rather than text as you move through it: see our accessibility statement. You can upload a finished file instead, once any tracked changes in a Word file are accepted or rejected.

If your plan changes

A workspace that moves to Free keeps its saved documents: under Document editor you can still download, send, rename or delete them, but not open them to edit. Sent on Free, a saved document goes as a fixed PDF, and its field tags stay as typed: place its fields by hand. Word templates you already have can still be used; editing their wording needs Solo again. Everything comes back when you upgrade.