The default folder where Outlook email signature files are located is:
Windows XP: C:\Documents and Settings\%username%\Application Data\Microsoft\Signatures
Windows 8 / 7 / Vista: C:\Users\%username%\AppData\Roaming\Microsoft\Signatures
NOTE: If your Windows language setting is other than English, the path will be your language equivalent of the above, e.g. (Dutch): C:\Gebruikers\%username%\AppData\Roaming\Microsoft\Handtekeningen
You can access the signatures’ location either by pasting the appropriate path into the Windows File Explorer address bar (marked red in Fig.1)…
Fig. 1. Signatures folder in Windows 8.
…or hold CTRL and click the Signatures button in Outlook Options:
Fig. 2. Signatures… button in the Mail section in Outlook 2013 Options.
To back up your Outlook email signatures, simply copy the Signatures folder and its contents to a safe location.
To restore a backup, paste the Signatures folder and its contents into C:\Documents and Settings\%username%\Application Data\Microsoft or C:\Users\%username%\AppData\Roaming\Microsoft\Signatures (depending on your Windows version) or your language equivalent.
More information on copying Windows folders in this Microsoft article.
Suggested reading
Mail-signatures.com: How to create or modify an email signature in Outlook 2010 and 2013
Mail-signatures.com: Free HTML email signature templates
Email signature management for Outlook, Exchange and Office 365
THANK YOU!!! This saved me a lot of time
Windows XP: your c:\ information does not exist in my Windows XP. Not even close. OK, now where is my signature really located?
Thank you…
Hi Daisy,
Have you tried the second method of getting to the target folder? Clicking the Signatures button while holding the ctrl key takes you to the signatures location. You can check the exact location of the signature folder in your system, then.
Thank you for the simple but crucial information of where the Signatures folder was stored in the user’s profile. Curiously, Win 7 search on the profile did not find “signatures” in AppData, but I am away now and will add this gem to my documentation. Isn’t it fascinating how the simplest bits of “everyone knows THAT” information are such show-stoppers when not known :).
I just did a clean install of Windows 10 Pro (after the upgrade from 8.1) and I was surprised to find that all of my signatures were gone. Thank you for helping me find them Boy, am I glad I backed up my AppData before the install. File History does not backup anything in AppData.
Pawel,
Thank you very much ! I was getting very FRUSTRATED trying to setup a simple HTML signature…… I tried several other posts and couldn’t figure anything out. 5 minutes after reading your post I was good to go.
Thank you again. Best Regards,
Jim
Jim,
I’m glad it helped! Follow us at https://twitter.com/codetwosoftware to get updates about new articles.
Best regards,
Pawel