This article contains prerelease information. Release dates, features, and other information are subject to change without notice.
Restrict agreements to recipients within your Adobe Acrobat Sign account.
Control whether users can send agreements only to recipients within your organization. This setting enforces an internal-only boundary by preventing agreements from being sent if any participant is external. Use this control to support internal workflows, reduce the risk of unintended sharing, and enable broader rollout to users who should not send agreements outside the account.
Configuration
Availability
- Acrobat Sign Solutions: Supported.
- Acrobat Sign for Government: Supported.
- Acrobat Standard and Acrobat Pro: Not supported.
Configuration scope
Sending to internal recipients only can be configured at the account and group level.
- Group-level settings override account-level settings.
Default value: Disabled.
Changing this setting will not impact agreements that are already in progress.
To access this setting, navigate to: Send Settings > Send only to internal recipients
Controls
Users in my account/group can send agreements only to internal recipients and CCs
- When enabled, users can add only recipients and CCs who are in the same Acrobat Sign account as the sender.
- When disabled, users can send agreements to any recipient, including external participants.
Impact
- External recipients are blocked during agreement creation.
- Real-time validation flags external recipients as they are entered.
- Agreements cannot be sent if any external participant is included.
- API requests that include external recipients fail with an error.
- Users cannot replace internal recipients with external recipients.
- Delegation is restricted to internal recipients only.
What users experience when this setting is enabled
This setting does not change how users send agreements. It prevents agreements from being sent if any recipient is external.
When enabled, Acrobat Sign validates all participants against the sender’s account at runtime.
Internal recipients are defined as users within the same Acrobat Sign account (same AccountID), not by email domain.
Enforcement behavior
- Recipients are validated as they are entered and again before the agreement is created.
- External recipients are flagged immediately and prevent the agreement from being sent.
- Users must remove external recipients before they can complete the send process.
- API requests that include external recipients are rejected with an error.
- Recipient replacement and delegation actions are restricted to internal users.
Users see an error message indicating that external recipients are not allowed.
What does not change
- Existing agreements with external recipients remain in effect.
- Workflow templates are not restricted, but validation occurs when sending.
- Witness participants are not restricted.
- In-person signing isn't restricted.
Best practices
- Enable this setting only for groups that operate fully within internal workflows.
- Do not enable this setting for groups that send agreements to customers, vendors, or external partners.
- Confirm that all required recipients exist as users in your Acrobat Sign account before enabling the setting.
- Communicate this change to users before enabling it, as it blocks external recipient scenarios immediately.
Things to know
- Internal recipients are determined by account membership, not email domain.
- This setting applies only to new agreements and modifications.
- External recipients cannot be added through UI or API when the setting is enabled.
- API integrations must handle errors when external recipients are included.
- Delegation and recipient replacement cannot be used to bypass this restriction.
