How to add a signature in Google Sheets
Google Sheets has no signature field, so a signature in a spreadsheet is an image sitting on top of the grid. That is fine for an internal sign-off sheet and wrong for anything you might have to rely on later. This page does both: make the image and place it properly, and know the point at which a spreadsheet stops being the right place to sign.
Make your signature here
Draw it with a mouse, a finger or a stylus, or type your name and let it be written for you. Nothing is uploaded and no account is needed: the free export is made in your browser and saved straight to your machine.
Draw your signature here
Export free gives you a PNG on a grey background with the SignSecure mark and name three pixels under your signature. That is what pays for the tool being here.
$1.95 gives you the same signature on a plain white background with nothing else on it, which is what you want on anything a customer will read. You pay through Stripe and the file downloads as soon as the payment clears. We delete it a day later.
Putting it in the sheet
-
Insert, Image, Image over cells.
Upload the PNG you exported above. "Over cells" floats the image above the grid, which is what you want for a signature: it will not be squashed when a column is resized. "In cell" makes it a cell value instead, which shrinks it to the row height and is almost always too small to read.
-
Size it against the row, not the screen.
Drag a corner handle, never an edge one, or the signature stretches out of proportion and looks forged. Scale down from the exported size rather than up: making a small image bigger is what produces the soft, fuzzy signature everyone recognises.
-
Decide what happens when rows move.
An image over cells does not move with the row underneath it. If people will be inserting rows above, protect the range, or put the signature below the table rather than inside it.
-
Protect the range.
Data, Protect sheets and ranges, then restrict who can edit. Without this, anybody with edit access can drag your signature onto a different row, and the sheet will not record that they did.
Where this stops being enough
A signature image in a spreadsheet is a picture. Anyone with edit access can move it, copy it onto another row, replace it or delete it, and the file records none of that in a way you could show anyone. There is no record of who added it, from what address, or when, and no copy of the document as it stood at the moment it was signed.
That is fine for a rota or an internal sign-off. It is not fine for anything with money, notice periods or obligations in it. For those, send the document for signature: each signer gets their own link, the file is fixed at the moment they sign, and what comes out the other end is a PDF with a hash-chained audit trail behind it that says who did what and when.
Questions people actually ask
Can you sign a Google Sheet legally?
You can put a signature image in one, and for something informal that may be all anybody wants. But a picture in a spreadsheet is not a signed record: there is nothing tying it to a person, nothing fixing the document as it stood, and nothing stopping the next editor from moving it. If it might ever be disputed, sign it somewhere that keeps a record.
Why does my signature look blurry?
Almost always because it was scaled up. Export at the size you drew it, then only ever make it smaller in Sheets. Drawing large and shrinking is how you get a crisp line.
Can I draw straight into Sheets instead?
Insert, Drawing, then Scribble. It works, but the drawing canvas is small, the line has no smoothing, and you cannot reuse the result anywhere else. Making the PNG once and keeping it is less work the second time you need it.
Does the free export put a watermark on my signature?
Not across it. The signature itself is untouched; the SignSecure mark and name sit three pixels underneath it on a grey background. The $1.95 export is the signature alone on white, which is what you want on anything a customer will read.