Stepping back, don’t your release forms need to be private to each individual?  If they were paper, you’d have one form per person and nobody could see anyone else’s form, no?  Or is it sign-in sheet style where everyone signs one piece of paper?  

If it’s one form per person, then you’ll need to do each one as its own envelope/recipient.  If you do it like a sign-in sheet, then you’d declare 20 recipients in your template.  Signer1, Signer2, etc.  Just names for the roles, not email addresses.  Then go to the document prep section, drag in your fields for Signer 1, select them all, copy/paste, with the new fields selected, assign them to Signer2 and maybe tweak their position.  Rinse and repeat. 

I want to do this like teachers used to do permission slips: I send a photocopy of a form to each household, and each household fills out the required fields and sends their form back. Private to each individual? I don’t really know what that means in this context. Each recipient supposedly gets one email with one document to sign...nobody is going to be looking at each other’s answers.

Right. So when I Copy all the fields from SOME GUY 1, then select the form for SOME GUY 2, nothing happens at all. Like I don’t get a blank form with no fields, I just have the same exact form with the same exact green fields for SOME GUY 1. Any changes I make to the form when SOME GUY 2 is selected are actually changing the form for SOME GUY 1. There is no way to make this work.

EVEN IF THIS DID WORK, is Docusign serious with this BS? Manually copy/paste one by one??? And then the pasted fields don’t even go to the same spot, you have to manually move them back to the same spot as all the other forms?? I can’t believe this is real software in 2025. I’m now 2 hours into a task that literally would’ve taken me less time if I handwrote everyone’s addresses onto physical envelopes, and mailed the forms. And it would’ve cost me less.

Wait, what? Oh you gotta be kidding me. So I would have to upgrade to a plan that allows more than 5 “envelopes” just to send a form to 20 different people???? 

If that’s the case, this is genuinely unbelievable.

As for your fields, you can copy paste all of guy 1’s fields and then re-assign those copies to guy2.  The field ownership setting is in the top right-ish along with format menu etc.  

As for sending, yeah, DocuSign charges per envelope since each signature has to be verified and what not.  If you want 20 people to get that form, then you’d need 20 envelopes.  With Pro accounts, you can set document visibility that would let you restrict Some Guy1 from seeing any page that he’s not a signer on.  But the expense of upgrading surely exceeds the expense per envelope.

Yeah, I see that. I can change all the fields from GUY1 to GUY2 and back again, but it sure seems like I’m only changing one document. I can go to the top left and select GUY1 or GUY2 or GUY69, and all the fields remain the same color. Then I can go to the top right menu, change the fields from GUY1 to GUY2, and they’ll change colors. Then if I go to the top left again and check to see if my GUY1 form still has GUY1 fields, well, nothing changes. I still see GUY2 field colors.

So in other words, it’s actually less expensive for me to print these out and physically send them, with actual physical stamped return envelopes, to 20 different people. If this wasn’t so frustrating, it would be utterly hysterical. Docusign is a bad, bad joke.

Oh, and I would’ve saved time, too. 

Anyway, thanks for trying to help, although I’m not sure why you’re spending your time troubleshooting for such obviously awful software.

Regarding those drop downs, the top left one is the recipient you are placing fields for.  Meaning if you drag a text box from the left onto the document, it will be for that person and should be their color.  With that same text box highlighted, you can use the top right dropdown to re-assign that text box to one of the other recipients.

I use DocuSign for work.  It’s not always the most intuitive, but given a little time, it can be very very useful.  I come here to help share the knowledge I’ve gained and to learn new things.

With respect, DocuSign’s more aimed at real estate and finance deals rather than waivers.  Something like the release waiver you’re doing may not need the legal strength that those do.

Cheers mate, and clearly I do not need anything that DS offers, except the refund (which, I will admit, was easily taken care of). 

I will maintain that the software is truly awful. I will not be convinced that nerfing the lowest paid tier to the extent that they do is reasonable. There is a reason that Docusign gets absolutely horrible reviews, consistently, in all corners of the internet. I hope Docusign rewards you in some way for all the free work you’re doing for them.

It’s funny, when I saw their big push for Community, I had the same thought.  “Oh, they’re making the customers do the support now.”  And to some extent it’s true.  But it’s not a bad way to kill some downtime.