Advanced Features When Assigning Fields to a Document

Once you understand the basics of placing fields onto your document, you can focus on a few other features and tips to help you customize the fields you've assigned.

Remember: As you place fields on your document, you can use keyboard functions to tab into and out of fields, press "Enter" to interact with them, and press "Escape" to exit.

Field Alignment

When the " Suggest Fields" setting is enabled, it will detect any blank lines in the document and help you align the field boxes on those lines:

Resizing Field Boxes

Another useful feature of the field boxes is the ability to resize the font or the length of a field by dragging the corners of the field to the desired size/length:

For text fields, the font size and the field can only be enlarged to a certain extent.

To make the text field continue onto the following line, hit " Enter" and the field will grow automatically. Alternatively, you can enable the "fixed width" feature, and this will require the text to carry over to the following line when it reaches the width of the text box:

Note: If you resize a field to a specific size, it will retain that size the next time you select it, unless you change it by dragging the field's corners again.

Advanced Text Field Features

Within the text and date field boxes is an "Advanced" option:

Adding Labels To Text Fields

You can add a label to change the text that the recipient sees when they click to fill out a field. For instance, instead of keeping " Text" you could enter instructions like "Enter First Name":

Then your recipient will see these instructions when they are filling out the form:

Auto-populate Text Fields

Any text fields that have the same label will auto-populate on-click as long as one of them has been filled out:

Even when no labels are set up, every time a text field is completed, an auto-populate drop-down with text from previously completed fields will be available:

Field Validation

You can also set field validation so that the recipient must enter the characters that are required, for instance, "Numbers Only":

Date Fields

Clicking on the " Advanced" button on the date field will give you the option to change the date format, depending on what works best for you:

You can also adjust the date field format on the account level in your Account Settings:

For contracts that require a time stamp as well as a date, you can select this date/time format in the Advanced -> Date Format setting:

Lock Signing Date

Date fields have an option that locks and automatically completes them with the signing date. To enable this option, turn on the " Lock Signing Date" feature in the date field:

With this enabled, the date field will automatically populate when your recipient/s begin signing their document.

CheckBox Group Fields

Checkbox groups are a great way to establish requirements for checkboxes. Validation is done within one checkbox group, ensuring that the signer is forced to select one but not both of the boxes.

You can also mark the entire CheckBox group as Required. When you add a checkbox to your document, click on it, and you will see a " +" icon below the box.

When you click on it, you can make a group of checkboxes and use Selection Requirements in the Checkbox Group to require that "Exactly 1" box is checked, for example.

In Advanced Settings, add a group name to associate selected field names with specific checkbox groups for future reference or integrations.

Checkbox groups are a great way to facilitate tabbing through fields on a document. Grouping checkboxes rather than adding individual ones can simplify things.

Requiring Fields

Finally, you can choose to make fields required or not required by clicking on the " Yes" or "No" button below the recipient's name:

If a field is required, a red vertical line will be next to it. If it is not needed, the vertical line will be grey:

Please ensure that your fields are correctly set to 'required' or 'optional' before sending your document.

Selecting and Editing Multiple Fields

You can select multiple fields at once to move, copy, delete, or edit them together.

How to select multiple fields:

Hold Shift (or Ctrl on Windows / Cmd on Mac) and click fields one at a time to add or remove them from the selection.
Click and drag on an empty area of the page to draw a selection box around multiple fields.
Press Ctrl+A (Windows) or Cmd+A (Mac) to select all fields on the current page.

When two or more fields are selected, a side panel opens on the right showing the number of fields selected and the actions you can take:

Actions available on a selection:

Copy and Paste: Use the toolbar buttons or Ctrl+C / Cmd+C and Ctrl+V / Cmd+V. Pasting on a different page places the fields at the same position. Pasting on the same page offsets them slightly so they don't stack on top of each other.
Duplicate: Press Ctrl+D / Cmd+D to duplicate the selected fields on the same page.
Delete: Press Delete or Backspace, or use the "Delete selected fields" button at the bottom of the panel.
Align: Click the Align icon in the toolbar to align fields left, right, up, or down.
Reposition: Click and drag any selected field to move them all together, or use the arrow keys to nudge them (hold Shift for larger increments).
Undo / Redo: Use the toolbar buttons or Ctrl+Z / Cmd+Z and Ctrl+Shift+Z / Cmd+Shift+Z to undo or redo actions.

Editing shared properties:

When multiple fields are selected, the panel shows the properties that all selected fields have in common. For example, selecting two text fields shows Label, Fixed Width, and Validation. Selecting a text field and a dropdown shows only Label, since dropdowns don't have Fixed Width or Validation. Changing a property in the panel applies it to all selected fields at once.

The properties that can appear depend on which field types are selected:

Label: text fields and dropdowns
Fixed Width: text fields
Validation: text fields
Date Format: date fields and date signed fields
Lock to Signing Date: date fields
Name Options: name fields

Required and Assigned To are always available regardless of which field types are selected.

Multi-select on mobile:

On a phone or tablet, long-press a field to enter select mode.

Checkboxes appear on all fields - tap to check or uncheck them.
A toolbar at the bottom of the screen provides copy, paste, align, undo, and redo.
Flick the bottom panel up to access the shared property settings.
Tap the X in the selection bar to exit select mode.

If you have any questions, please reach out to us: support@signwell.com.