Everyone knows the classic seal with name, company logo or other motifs, which is left on documents in addition to the signature. Many companies now only send documents digitally, so the old seal has had its day. But digital documents can also be given a seal. Find out here how a digital seal works.
An electronic seal or digital company seal saves time and money and is easy to produce. The digital seal can be placed under documents as a supplement to the signature and thus identify you as the owner or author. Whether as a company seal, personal seal or visual highlight - the virtual seal makes documents more individual and emphasises their importance.
The digital seal is therefore suitable for all documents that are very important or that you want to clearly mark as your property. It also gives documents a personal or official touch, depending on the recipient to whom you are sending them. You can use it to digitally "seal" PDF documents, for example, but you can also insert seals into a classic Word document.
Whether as a supplement to a signature or as the sole signature, with a digital seal you make your virtual documents legally secure. With it, PDFs, for example, can no longer be easily converted into editable documents, which reduces the risk of data theft or forgery. The digital seal also marks the originality and gives the document your personal signature in a professional look.
A digital seal is suitable for the following documents, for example:
A digital seal offers some advantages over the classic version, but it also has disadvantages. You can find an overview of both in the following table.
Classic wooden seal
Advantages
Disadvantages
Digital seal
Advantages
Disadvantages
You can create a digital seal with the programme Adobe Acrobat. A design with Word is also possible. Here you will find both options for creating your own digital seal.
Creating a digital seal in Word is relatively simple and can be done in just a few steps. You proceed as follows:
Open your Word programme and create a new document.
Click on "Insert" to open the menu and select "Word-Art" under "Text field".
Choose any font and add your seal text in the text field.
Next, you can transform your text field as you like and shape it as you wish. For example, the seal text can be arranged in a circle or oval to form the frame of your seal.
Now add your company logo or another graphic element.
Once your seal design is finished, save the file.
You can now use the created seal logo in your document. For contracts and other documents that you want to make forgery-proof, conversion into a PDF is recommended.
Instead of Word, you can also create your digital seal in a classic image editing programme and then integrate it into other documents as a graphic file. However, this does not work without problems with all file formats.
Since only PDFs with a seal can be signed in a forgery-proof manner, you can embed your digital seal directly in the PDF using Adobe Acrobat Reader DC. This is how it works step by step:
You can insert ready-made motifs into a PDF document, but also your own seals. You can design your own seal motif in any graphics programme.
Open the PDF file that you want to seal and then the "Tools" tab. Click here on "Seal".
Now you can use one of the existing seals or select "Custom Seals" and load it from your hard drive into the PDF via "Create" and "Browse".
Now choose a category that matches the seal and give it an individual name.
After clicking on "OK", in the future, you can use your own seal motif for each PDF by selecting it in the seal palette and placing it in the appropriate place in the document.
After saving the PDF, the seal is permanently integrated and you can continue to use the document.
The electronic seal offers many advantages, but is not suitable for all types of documents. However, it is recommended for important online documents, which become forgery-proof thanks to your signature with a seal. A digital company seal can be designed in any way you like. A combination of company logo and name looks visually appealing and serious. Similar to a signature on paper, the digital seal is legally valid, which is very important, for example, when sending online contracts as a PDF version. In addition, the digital seal marks the document as "original". It is particularly recommended for PDFs, as it is not always easy to integrate into other document types or cannot be opened properly by the recipient.