Documents blurred / unreadable when uploaded

Hi ​@David.Cribbs,

Sorry for the frustration, this was reproducible and I passed along your comment to our internal teams.

If you have form fields embedded in your document, that’s probably the culprit. The interactive form fields (text boxes, checkboxes, dropdowns, etc. built into the file) sometimes conflict with the rendering agent during upload, which causes the blurred text you're seeing.

The workaround you can try is to flatten your PDF before uploading. This removes the interactive field layer and turns it into a static document. The easiest way to do this is via Print to PDF:

1. Open your document
2. Go to File > Print
3. Select a PDF printer as your destination (e.g., "Microsoft Print to PDF" on Windows, or the PDF option in the print dialog on Mac)
4. Save the output

This strips out the form field layer that causes the rendering issue.

Note: Because this removes the original form fields, you'll need to re-add any signature or data fields using Docusign's built-in tagging tools after uploading the flattened version.

Give that a try and let me know if it works. If you're still seeing blurring after flattening, you can create a support ticket so they can take a closer look at the specific document and your account settings.

Thank you Emily - I will give that a try next time. Really appreciate you getting on this string.

Hi Emily, that didn’t work. I will raise a ticket. 

No problem ​@David.Cribbs, sorry it didn’t work 😅 hopefully our support team can help you out! If they do manage to solve the issue for you, would you mind updating this thread so others with the same issue can find it? 

It seems to work if I logout and log back in. Annoying but hey ho.

Oh interesting, thanks for the update ​@David.Cribbs. I’ll put this in the ticket, maybe that will help figure out what’s going on.