Word - inserting your signature

MKS

Can someone help, please? How do I insert my signature in a Word document? I've tried putting the signature line in and inserting the file of my signature and it just looks like I've signed a piece of paper, cut it out and stuck it on! Not very professional looking! TIA

John_Gray

The "file of your signature" should be a GIF or PNG with a transparent background. That way you don't get the box enclosing the signature in a different colour...

MKS

Excuse the ignorance but do I just sign on transparent film or is there some other way to do it?

fwor

Signing on something transparent probably won't help. You need to edit the GIF or PNG with something like Photoshop or The Gimp to remove the background (or fill the background with white, if that's the background colour you are using in Word).

How you do that depends on what graphics editing software you use.

MKS

Will give it a try, if I can't do it, I'll be back! Thanks very much.

fenlander_uk

Presumably you signed on a piece of paper and scanned it to a JPG or GIF file? Try opening the file in pretty much any image editor and increase the contrast until the greyness disappears from the background. This should do fine so long as you only use it on white documents. You will also need to crop the image to remove as much as possible of the white space around the signature.

You can usually achieve the same effect using your scanning software - use the expert or advanced settings and adjust the contrast and crop area before saving the file.

GillsMan7

Once you've done all that here's a free tip if you're using Word 2007 or 2010:

Copy and paste the signature into your document, and if you want add some text e.g:

Yours sincerely,

[SCAN OF SIGNATURE]

Your Name

Then, select the signature block (the scan and any text) and on the ribbon go to the Insert tab then Quick Parts (in the Text group). From there choose Save Selection to Quick Part gallery.

This will open a dialogue box. Give it a short, memorable name (e.g. your initials or "sig"). You can leave all the other values as they are if you like and just press OK.

Then, you can type the name of the quick part and press F3 and it will print it out on the page.

A really quick and easy way to use your signature block over and again.

It's also possible to do this in Word 2003, but it's been a while since I used that.

Hope that helps.

MKS

Thanks, have managed to do it. Just installed Word 2010, so will use GillsMan7's advice. Will probably be posting for help on my next problem - how can I fill out a form that was sent to me in pdf. It will not let me enter anything!

Farway

MKS wrote: »

Will probably be posting for help on my next problem - how can I fill out a form that was sent to me in pdf. It will not let me enter anything!

Do a Google search for "free pdf editors" omit the quotation marks

Then take your pick

MKS

Thanks, Farway, I'll give it a go. I am def not 'techie minded' or is that just stating the obvious?