A new electronic signature requirement became effective on January 25, 2022 for the National Institutes of Health (NIH) Other Support document. Before the signed PDF can be uploaded into eRA Commons, it must be “flattened”, which removes fillable fields, text boxes, and inserted images.
The easiest way to flatten a PDF is Print to PDF. To do this, go to File>Print, select the printer option from the menu, and then select “Adobe PDF” or “Microsoft Print to PDF” (see figure below). Click the Print button and name the file.
See the NIH website for more information.
