Hey everyone, Kevin here. Today I want to show you how
you can create an electronic signature directly within Microsoft Word.
I'll show you a few different techniques for creating your signature.
They have different quality levels, and you could decide which one you think looks the best.
Once we create our signature, I'll also show you
a few ways that you can very quickly and easily then reuse your signature.
One of them is by saving it as a transparent PNG, and then I'll
also show you how we could use something called quick parts within Microsoft Word.
One thing to call out before we jump into this, today we're creating an
electronic signature. That's basically an image of your handwritten signature,
and that differs from a digital signature, which is a certificate that validates your identity.
That's out of the scope today.
All right, let's jump on the PC and let's create an electronic signature.
Here I am in Microsoft Word, and I have a contract that I need to sign.
The Kevin Cookie Company wants to pay me money for using my image in marketing campaigns, so why not?
It's basically free money for me.
Down below, here I see these signature field, and right now it's pretty lonely.
There's no signature here.
Now in the introduction, I mentioned that we can create a signature directly within Microsoft Word.
We don't have to print it out, sign it, and scan it back in.
That's the old-fashioned way of doing it.
Let's do it the modern way. Here within Microsoft Word, we can draw our signature.
So, let's just go right up to the top where you have all these different tabs and then select
draw, and there is no draw option here, but don't worry,
we can very easily get a draw option to appear up here on the top tabs.
Simply take your mouse.
You could be in any tab here and then right click on the ribbon,
and right within this menu, there's the option to customize the ribbon.
Let's click on this. This opens up Word options and we can customize what all
shows up on the ribbon, and right here, there's an option to select
draw, so this will add a new tab to the ribbon.
Once you check that box, next click on OK, and look at that.
There's now a new tab up on top called draw.
Let's click into this to see what we can do.
Within the draw tab, I have access to several different drawing and annotation tools.
Now I'm signing a pretty formal and high dollar value contract,
so I probably don't want to mess around.
I should just go with the black pen right here.
When I click on the black pen, here I see this downward facing carat icon.
When I click on this, this exposes more controls.
Here I can set the thickness of my pen and I can also choose from all of these different colors.
In fact, down below, if I click on more colors, I can basically choose any color that I can imagine.
Now I'm really, really tempted to go with this rainbow color right down here,
but our legal team at the Kevin Cookie Company, they tend to be more of the serious type,
so I should probably keep things straight and just go with black.
Now that I've selected the black pen, I'm now ready to sign the document.
I have the pen selected and I could come down here to the signature field.
If you have let's say a laptop with a touch screen, you can now sign your name there.
You could also simply use your mouse to sign.
It might not look quite as good as a normal signature, but you could
actually get fairly good-looking signatures just with your mouse.
Alternatively, you can also use your trackpad to sign, and that's what I'm going to do right here.
And that's now inserted my signature using my trackpad and that actually looks pretty decent.
Now let's say that maybe I want to move my signature around,
or maybe I want to adjust the size.
I can very easily do that.
Here I'll go back up to my drawing tools and here I'll select the mouse icon or the cursor.
When I select that, I could come down and here I'll select my name.
So here it's now highlighted.
Let's say maybe I want to make it look bigger.
Here I could drag it over.
But oh no, the aspect ratio there got really messed up,
and I probably wouldn't sign my name like that.
I'll press Control + Z to undo.
If I want to keep the aspect ratio, I can press the shift key and then click in the
corner and here you'll notice that it maintains the aspect ratio as I enlarge it or it'll work
as well when I reduce the size, but actually I kind of like the size. I thought that was fine.
Also, I can move my signature around,
here I'll select it and I could put it anywhere on the document.
I could even put it in front of this contract text if I wanted to.
But once again, I said our lawyers are more the serious bunch,
so I should probably leave it right down in the signature field over here.
You'll see when I have this object selected, I have this little icon or rectangle appear to
the right with all of my layout options, and right now it's set to sit in front of text.
What this allows me to do is I can place this anywhere I want on this
page and it won't interfere with any of the existing content, so that's pretty cool,
especially when you're trying to place your signature in a specific position.
Another thing that I like about using the drawing tool is
this signature is extremely high resolution.
Here I'll put my mouse cursor right on my name and let me just zoom in all the way.
Look at the quality of my name.
It's extremely crisp and it looks really good, especially when you print your document.
This will ensure that it prints with very high
quality. Along with the resolution of the signature, it's also transparent.
Right up here, if I click on design and let me go over
and maybe I'll change the page color to let's go with a green color.
Here you'll see that it also applies green behind the signature, so not only is it high resolution,
but it's also transparent.
So far, we've looked at how to add your signature directly on either your PC or your laptop,
but maybe you'd prefer to write your signature with your finger on your phone
or maybe you just want to write on paper and then get that into Microsoft Word.
Next, let's jump over to the phone and I'll show you how to capture your signature there as well.
Here I am now on my iPhone, and I have the Microsoft Word app installed.
You can do this on both iPhone and on Android.
If we look here, it's the same exact document, and here again, I can see my
signature right down here on my document, but I want to sign my name using my phone.
I think I can write probably a better-looking signature.
Right up here, there's the edit icon.
I'm currently in read mode, so I'll click right up here on that icon.
This opens up edit mode. Within edit mode,
to access the drawing menu, let's go right up here on the top and click on this icon.
This opens up all of the different tabs that we saw previously in the desktop,
and currently I'm on the Home tab.
I'll click on this, and this exposes all of the different tabs, and right here,
let's click on the one called draw.
When I click on draw, right down here I can start inking.
Let's click on that.
This opens up all of my drawing tools,
and it probably looks pretty familiar to what we saw on the desktop.
We have a whole bunch of similar tools and here again I see my rainbow.
I could use that, but I'm going to hold back. Once again, let's go with the boring black pen.
Here too, I also see this carrot icon.
Let's click on that to see what we can change.
When I click on the carrot icon, here too I could also set the thickness,
and I have access to all of these different colors down below, and even here I can set
any color that I desire. And look, there's even a sparkle animation, but once again,
I don't think the legal team would like that, so I'll just go with black and click on done.
Now that I have the pen tool selected, let me sign my name on this document.
And look at that, there's my signature, and I don't know about you, but when I compare these
two, this looks like a drunken person wrote this name, and this one looks very smooth.
So, I'd probably go with this signature. Down below in the bottom left-hand corner,
I can also move my signature around.
I can adjust the size if I want to position it in a different place.
Next, I want to show you how you can also capture your
signature using an old-fashioned method, pen and paper, together with the Word app.
Once again, let's click on this icon up here to see all of the different tabs.
This once again opens up the menu on the bottom and let's click over here.
This opens up all of the different menus.
This time let's click on the one called insert.
Within the insert menu, scroll down and there's an option called camera.
Let's click on that one.
This opens up the camera app, and here I've written my name on a piece of paper.
I’ll take a photo of this.
This looks good, so I'll click on use photo down below.
This has now inserted the signature into my Word document, but I have this really ugly
grayish background behind my signature.
Next let's jump back to the desktop and I'll clean this up.
I'm now back on my desktop and here again we can see the document.
Here's the first signature that I signed on my phone, and this one looks pretty nice,
and down below, I can also see the photo that I took.
Now I definitely couldn't just place a photo like this in.
I need to clean it up a little bit first. Now if you're wondering, well, how did I take a picture
on my phone, place it in the document and then here it's showing up on my PC?
Well, I saved this document right here in the cloud using OneDrive,
so anything I put in the document on my phone automatically shows up on my PC in Microsoft Word.
If you haven't used OneDrive before, I've included a link in the description
down below which will get you started with OneDrive, but it's a really neat thing to use,
especially if you're going to be working on documents on your phone and then also on your PC.
To clean up this signature, first off, let's select the signature right here.
Next, let's go up to the top tabs and click on picture format.
First, I want to crop it down a little bit. Here you see this signature only takes up
this space here, but we have all this unnecessary page included as part of it.
So here we want to crop it.
I'll click on crop, and let me drag in the borders so it just surrounds the text.
This now looks like a much better crop, but here we still have that annoying gray background.
How do we get rid of this?
Well, once again, select the image, go up to picture format,
and all the way over on the left-hand side, we can adjust the color.
Here I'll click on color and right down under re-colour, there's the option to
turn it to black and white at 50%, and this is now looking like a pretty good signature.
I have the green background, so this doesn't quite work but let me change the background
to white and you'll see what it looks like compared to the other signatures.
I've now set the background to white, and I want to make a few more tweaks. Here I'll click
on my signature and under layout options, let me set it so it sits in front of text.
Also, right here, I can adjust the size and I can drag it up, so it sits
right up alongside the other signatures.
So here now we can see all the different signatures alongside one another.
Once again, this is the trackpad signature, this is my signature directly on the phone,
and this is the photo of my signature on a sheet of paper.
If you like the third signature the most, you might be wondering, well,
what happens if I don't have a white background?
So here I'll change the page color and let me go to this light blue.
Here you see with that signature it has that white background.
Is there any way to get rid of that? And fortunately, there is.
Select this signature, go up to picture format,
and all the way over on the left-hand side there's the option to remove the background.
Click on that. This opens up a magenta rectangle
around the signature, and any area that's in magenta will not be kept.
So here I can go up and I can click on mark areas to keep, and here I'll just make sure
that I select the ink to make sure that it keeps that. There I've selected all of this.
If for whatever reason it included some things that I didn't want to include, I could also mark
those areas to remove, but this looks pretty good right now, so I'll click on keep changes.
And there now you see the signature with a transparent background.
So those are my three different electronic signatures, and when you look at this,
I personally prefer the one in the middle the most.
This is the one that I signed on the phone. Over on the left-hand side,
I used the trackpad to create this, but it looks a little jagged and it has some rough edges.
Over here this looks pretty smooth and very sharp, and then over on the right-hand side,
perhaps this looks the most natural because this is my handwriting, but the
image isn't quite as good resolution as the other options over to the left.
Now that we've created our signatures,
you might be wondering, what if I want to reuse my signature in the future?
Can I very easily do that?
After all, you don't want to go through this whole process again.
Instead, put the effort in once and then you could leverage it again and again.
Now you could simply select your signature, right click, and then go down to save as picture.
However, when you do this, the quality won't be that great.
So instead, let's copy the signature,
select it, press control + C, and then let's open up PowerPoint.
In Microsoft PowerPoint, simply open up a blank new slide, and then paste in your signature.
Here, select your signature, right click, and then go down to save as picture.
Now, I don't know why, but for whatever reason, PowerPoint saves pictures in much
better quality than Word, so I'd recommend going through this flow.
This opens up the PowerPoint save as dialog. Give your signature a name,
choose a location, and then click on save. Back now within Microsoft Word,
anytime you want to use your signature, you can simply navigate to where the PNG file is saved,
and then you can drag and drop it into your document and look at that.
I've now placed my signature in the document again, and here I could sign it yet again.
I could sign my document again and again and again.
One of the nice things about using a PNG is
you could leverage that anywhere else where you need a signature.
You can place it basically anywhere.
It doesn't just have to be in Microsoft Word.
The nice thing though is you can use Word to create your signature.
Now I want to show one other way that you can very quickly insert your signature,
and maybe you want to put in other stuff alongside your signature.
So out of these three signatures, let me delete these two because these weren't quite as good.
I like this one the best, so I'll place this in the signature field.
Now, frequently when I have to sign documents, I sign my name,
I put down my name, I put down my title, and all this other information,
and I don't want to have to re-create that every single time that I need to sign my signature.
Instead, I can highlight this entire signature block right here, and then I can go up to the
insert tab, and all the way over on the right-hand side, there's an option called quick parts.
Let's click on that.
Right here, I can click on save selection to quick part gallery.
Click on that.
This opens up a prompt where I can give my quick part a name.
I'll call this Kevin signature.
Once you give it a name, you could fill out these
other items right here, but I'm just going to leave them as is and then click on OK.
Now that I've saved my quick part, any time I need to insert my signature along with my
name and title and other information, I can go up to insert up on the top tab,
and I can go over to quick parts and right here I see my signature with my title,
so I can click there, and once again, that inserts my signature with all of my other information.
So, all I have to do is come up here and boom, it inserts my signature automatically.
So that is by far the easiest way to insert your signature into a Word document.
All right, well hopefully you now have your very own electronic signature.
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All right, well that's all I had for you today,
I hope you enjoyed, and as always, I hope to see you next time. Bye.