Suggesting: Fill-able Fields and Signature Fields should have separate rights and properties that made them independently manageable such as:

Providing users the ability to lock out the ability to fill out a fields SEPARATELY from signing fields when using password protection

OR simply making these fill-able and singable fields distinctly separate to where when going through the process to send a document out for the signature of recipients, users are able to ensure that fill-able fields REMAIN READ ONLY.

Problem: We would like to fill out a form for a new employee including their pay rate for their offer letter.

We would like these fields LOCKED after we sign the document and send it to the new employee for signture in 13 places over 26 page.

We've tried this by:
1) Having the Hiring Manager digitally sign the document and make all the fields "READ ONLY". BUT when we send the document through the signature process all the fields become editable again. Not acceptable. We are not asking recipient to reedit out offer letter or other terms presented to them.

2) We looked at making the document password protected and thus limiting the recipients ability to edit and fill out fields BUT going through the signature process opens all fields up for editing again. Not acceptable for the very same reasons above.

What we are forced to do now, is PRINT the document as a PDF and then designate the 13 places over 26 page we had previously designated for signature. This is time consuming and very unattractive not efficient.