Filling in and signing a page

To fill in a form that has no fields to type in, or sign a lease or a letter and send it back: select the page and use Fill and sign in the panel. Sign this page… starts with your signature; Add text or ticks… opens the page to type on, tick boxes or add today's date. Both open the same editor, and everything in it can go on one page.

A signature is a picture of your signature on the page, like signing a printout, not a certificate-based digital signature.

Making a signature

The first time, Collated asks for a signature. There are three ways:

• Draw: sign in the box with your finger, a stylus or the mouse. On a phone the box fills the screen; turn the phone sideways for more room. Undo stroke takes back the last line, Clear starts again.
• Type: type your name and it's set in a handwriting-style typeface.
• Photo: sign on plain white paper, then Take a photo (on a phone) or Choose a picture. Collated keeps the ink and makes the paper transparent, so only the signature shows on the page.

Drawn and typed signatures can be black or blue. Use this signature puts it on the page.

Saved signatures

Tick Save on this device for next time (it starts unticked) and the signature is kept in your browser on this device, so next time it's under Saved and one tap puts it on the page. It's never uploaded. Collated keeps your 12 most recent; delete one with the bin button beside it under Saved. Clearing the site's data in your browser deletes them all. Start over doesn't: it clears your document, not your signatures.

Text, dates, ticks and crosses

Under the page, Add has a button for each:

• Text: a box appears in the middle of the page and the cursor goes to the typing box under the page. Type what goes there; press Return for another line. On a phone the editor shrinks to the space above the on-screen keyboard, so you can see the text on the page as you type. Tap a text on the page to select it and change it later.
• Date: today's date, written the way your device writes dates ("5 Nov 2026"). It's text, so you can change it like any other.
• Tick and Cross: for the boxes on a form.

New text is about 12 pt and a tick about the size of a form's box; make them bigger or smaller as below. Text, ticks and crosses can be black, blue or red: select one and pick its colour.

Text is set in Helvetica, the font the watermark uses, so it can only use Latin letters (those in Windows-1252: English and most Western European languages). If you type a letter it can't write, the editor says which, and Apply waits until it's gone.

Placing it

The editor shows the page exactly as it will print. A new signature goes low on the page, anything else in the middle. Then select one (tap it) and:

• Move: drag it, or tap the page where it should go. To tick several boxes, press Tick and tap the box, then do it again.
• Size: pinch with two fingers, drag its corner, or use Smaller and Larger.
• Turn: twist with two fingers, drag the knob above it, or use the turn buttons. It turns up to 30° either way.
• Keyboard: focus it on the page, then the arrow keys move it, + and − size it, [ and ] turn it (hold Shift for bigger steps), and Delete removes it.

Signature puts a second signature (or your initials) on the same page. The bin button removes the selected one. Apply puts everything on the page as one step, so Undo takes it all back; Cancel leaves the page as it was. Empty text is left off. In the panel, Edit… changes them later and Remove all takes them off.

Signatures, text and ticks can go anywhere on the page, the margins too. It works the same on single pages, combined pages and blank pages. They stay where you put them on the paper if you rotate, crop or change the picture underneath, and if you change the paper size they keep their place and size as a share of the page, so they still line up with the form. Duplicating a page copies them; combining or splitting pages leaves them off the new pages, so fill in and sign after you combine.

In the PDF

Everything is drawn into the PDF where the preview shows it, over everything on the page, under a watermark and the page number. Text is real text in the PDF, so it can be selected, copied and searched; ticks and crosses are drawn as lines, sharp at any zoom. On a PDF page you added, the page keeps its own text and drawing, and these go on top. With a watermark burned in, they are burned into the page picture too, and the text can't be selected there.