Get Started with a Digital Signature in PowerPoint 2013 for Windows

A digital signature or ID is more commonly known as a digital certificate. Digital IDs help validate your identity, and they can be used to sign important documents including PowerPoint presentations. Digital certificates are typically issued by a Certificate Authority (CA), which is a trusted third-party entity that issues these certificates for use by other parties. You can purchase a digital certificate from many commercial third-party certificate authorities or obtain a free digital certificate. There are many institutions, governments, and corporations that can also issue their own digital certificates.

As far as PowerPoint is concerned, a digital certificate is necessary for a digital signature because it provides the key that can be associated with a digital signature. Digital certificates make it possible for digital signatures to be used as a way to authenticate digital information. In subsequent tutorials of this series, we will explore how you can acquire a digital certificate or create your own digital signature. In this tutorial we will show you how to add a digital signature in PowerPoint 2013:

Launch PowerPoint, and open any existing presentation that you want to add a digital signature to. If you made any changes to your slides, do save your presentation before you proceed further.
Access the File tab, and choose the Info Pane within Backstage view, as shown in Figure 1 below. Thereafter, select the Protect Presentation option, as shown highlighted in red within Figure 1.

Figure 1: Protect Presentation option
From the resultant drop-down menu select the Add a Digital Signature option, highlighted in red within Figure 2.

Figure 2: Add a Digital Signature option selected within the Protect Presentation drop-down menu
This opens a message window, as shown in Figure 3.

Figure 3 PowerPoint message window
As you can see, this message window provides you with two options: Yes and No. Clicking the Yes button opens a web page as shown in Figure 4. Here you can find services that issue digital IDs for your use. You can check out the services listed within this web page, and choose any service based on your requirement and budget.

Figure 4: Web page showing list of services for digital IDs

Clicking the No button within the PowerPoint message window shown in Figure 3 earlier on this page just closes the message window and takes you back to the Backstage view.

Tip: You can create a self-signed digital certificate in Office 2013 as explained in our Creating Digital Certificates Outside PowerPoint 2013 tutorial.