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Legacy User
August 11, 2015
Solved

Data Field Box is transparent. How do I make it a solid background? So I can type over existing text?

  • August 11, 2015
  • 13 replies
  • 1755 views

When I use the data field box it looks like it is covering the existing text. However, when I receive the document back from my client the data field box was transparently creating a blur of text, the old existing text, and the new changed text. How do I make the data box solid before filling in the text?

Best answer by Community Expert

Welcome to the community, 

Currently, you cannot make the background of a data field solid. 

DocuSign is not designed to be a document editor, but we do have some features that can help you make changes to your document. Please view 

**Please note that If you wanted to mark up the document before it reaches the customer, you would need to add yourself as a signing recipient first. We assume that the document initially uploaded does not require markup because DocuSign's main purpose is to facilitate signature and not document editing. 

I hope this helps, 

Marc

13 replies

Docusign Employee
August 12, 2015

Welcome to the community, 

Currently, you cannot make the background of a data field solid. 

DocuSign is not designed to be a document editor, but we do have some features that can help you make changes to your document. Please view 

**Please note that If you wanted to mark up the document before it reaches the customer, you would need to add yourself as a signing recipient first. We assume that the document initially uploaded does not require markup because DocuSign's main purpose is to facilitate signature and not document editing. 

I hope this helps, 

Marc

Legacy User
June 2, 2017

I agree - sometimes I need to throw a "this page intentionally left blank" on a page over other text, depending on the selection that the signer makes on another page. Being able to set the background as white would be a huge help!

Legacy User
May 10, 2018

Sometime a form has "/" for a date filed, and the docusign date will overwrite the field, would like the / in the date to overwrite the slashes that came on the document. solid vs transparent has  a definite value

Legacy User
July 16, 2019

you should remove this post because the help links above do not work anymore.

Legacy User
August 1, 2019

This would be a trivial task to add background color/opacity to the text box properties.

Rather than tell us what Docusign is and isnt... maybe open your ears to easy opportunities to meet needs.

I get the same type 'we dont care' answers when I ask for an easy way to populate fields when I send out a lease

i also echo edwins remarks. the links are broken.

Legacy User
March 21, 2022

Very nasty solution but since I arrived here from a Google and having not found a solution, I'll share what I did (with no pride):

Create a text field and set value using repeated '█' characters. Set the text colour to white. Change font size as required. Result; background of doc is hidden. As I say, not proud suggesting but might help some out.

Legacy User
March 21, 2022

Ed, that is a great solution.

Since the time I last contributed to this questions, learned that scanning a doc at about 300dpi and then using the adobe export to WORD actually does a pretty nice job of providing a document you can edit. That assumes everyone has a scanner and ADOBE DC, so maybe not an answer for everyone.

Legacy User
October 11, 2022

I can't understand why this wouldn't be possible here, I would imaging it would be used often.

Legacy User
October 11, 2022

Panda doc does a better job at stuff like this. It also allows you to just fill out a grid of variables. As w everything, the 2 products have plusses and minuses. For me, the plusses outweighed, so i switched.

Legacy User
March 14, 2023

We're going to switch to Panda Docs as well at this rate - DocuSign kinda sucks! Can't believe this isn't possible yet, and there are many other features that they don't have and really should if they want to keep up with their competition.