Signature Object

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Office Developer Reference

Represents a digital signature attached to a document. Signature objects are contained in the SignatureSet collection of the Document object.

Remarks

You can add a Signature object to a SignatureSet collection using the Add method and you can return an existing member using the Item method. To remove a Signature from a SignatureSet collection, use the Delete method of the Signature object.

Example

The following example prompts the user to select a digital signature with which to sign the active document in Microsoft Office Word. To use this example, open a document in Word and pass this function the name of a certificate issuer and the name of a certificate signer that match the Issued By and Issued To fields of a digital certificate in the Digital Certificates dialog box. This example will test to make sure that the digital signature that the user selects meets certain criteria, such as not having expired, before the new signature is committed to the disk.

Visual Basic for Applications 
  Function AddSignature(ByVal strIssuer As String, _
    strSigner As String) As Boolean

On Error GoTo Error_Handler

Dim sig As Signature

'Display the dialog box that lets the
'user select a digital signature.
'If the user selects a signature, then
'it is added to the Signatures
'collection. If the user does not, then
'an error is returned.
Set sig = ActiveDocument.Signatures.Add

'Test several properties before commiting the Signature object to disk.
If sig.Issuer = strIssuer And _
    sig.Signer = strSigner And _
    sig.IsCertificateExpired = False And _
    sig.IsCertificateRevoked = False And _
    sig.IsValid = True Then

    MsgBox "Signed"
    AddSignature = True 
'Otherwise, remove the Signature object from the SignatureSet collection.
Else
    sig.Delete
    MsgBox "Not signed"
    AddSignature = False 
End If

'Commit all signatures in the SignatureSet collection to the disk.
ActiveDocument.Signatures.Commit

Exit Function



Error_Handler:
AddSignature = False
MsgBox "Action canceled."
End Function

See Also