A digital signature or ID is more commonly known as a digital certificate. Digital IDs help to 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 digital certificates for use by other parties. You can also 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 2010:
- 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 menu, and choose the Info option to get to
Backstage view, as shown in Figure 1 below.
Thereafter, select the Protect Presentation option to bring up a small drop-down menu (see Figure 1 again). From
the drop-down menu select the Add a Digital Signature option, highlighted in red in
Figure 1 below.

Figure 1: Add a Digital Signature option selected within the Protect Presentation drop-down menu
- This opens a message window, as shown in Figure 2.

Figure 2: PowerPoint message window
The message windows provides you with two buttons: Signature Service from the Office Marketplace and OK.
Clicking the Signature Service from the Office Marketplace button opens a web page as shown in Figure 3. Here you
can find services that issue digital IDs for your use, or services that complement the 2007/2010 Microsoft Office system and use digital IDs. You can
check out the services listed within this web page, and choose any service based on your requirement and budget.

Figure 3: Web page showing list of services for digital IDs
Note: Although the web page lists the services that complement the 2007 Microsoft Office system, the same
list works for Microsoft Office 2010 as well.
- Clicking the OK button within the PowerPoint message window (see Figure 2) opens the
Get a Digital ID dialog box (see Figure 4). Within this dialog box you'll get two options:
Get a digital ID from a Microsoft partner, and Create your own digital ID.

Figure 4: Get a Digital ID dialog box
Note: You can anytime click the Don't show this message again check-box (highlighted in
red in Figure 2, shown earlier on this page) within the PowerPoint message window. The next time you access the Add a Digital Signature option from within Protect Presentation drop-down menu it will directly open the
Get a Digital ID dialog box (refer to Figure 4 above).
See Also:
Get Started with a Digital Signature in PowerPoint 2013
for Windows