Setting up an automatic email signature in Outlook isn’t rocket science. But if you want to have a perfect email signature under every email you send, you might find this guide quite helpful. I’ll show you the easiest possible way to add signatures to Outlook.
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[Update]: The problem with the new Outlook seems to be fixed. While drag-and-drop still works, you should also be able to set up your email signature with a simple copy-and-paste.
Setting up email signatures can be a headache. Especially in the new Outlook for Windows. Fortunately, there is a simple way to do this. I’ll show you how to add a professional email signature to the new Outlook. This method works every time and once you see it, you won’t believe how easy it is.
A professional email signature adds a human touch to your digital communication. It needs to look good and provide alternative ways to reach you. It’s a good sign that people want to know who they’re talking to. It means you’re on the right track. And to show them who you are, you might want to add a link to your LinkedIn profile. You could also add a marketing banner to let them know about a promo offer you’re running. A photo and logo helps too, so that they know they’re not having conversations with an AI.
But why am I mentioning this? Well, to have a professional email signature which includes those elements, you need to have it coded in HTML, so that it works in all email clients used to view your emails.
HTML code for email signatures is not quite the same as the code used for websites. Email clients have a different parsing engine and trying to use the same methods you’d use for developing websites usually ends in failure.
That’s why it’s easiest to use a dedicated tool, designed to work with email signatures.
The free signature generator is the perfect tool if you just want a signature for yourself.
To design a signature in the generator, choose any signature template and fill it in with your data. The steps are really easy and if you run into any issues, its user’s manual has all the answers.
The generator works with all email clients. To use it with the new Outlook for Windows, choose New Outlook as your platform. When you’re happy with your design, click Apply your signature.
And here’s how to add a signature, because this part isn’t as obvious. You might want to minimize the generator for the time being.
Since the new Outlook entered the Global Availability phase, you should be able to simply copy-and-paste the email signature from the generator to Outlook settings. Follow the instructions below to drag-and-drop your email signature only if the default method doesn’t work.
When you have the signature ready, it’s time to open signature settings in the new Outlook.
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key combination for an easy and even screen split, but you can use your second display (if you have it). Now, select the signature in the generator and drag & drop it into the signature settings in Outlook. Since it’s easier shown than written, see this short video:Note: Alternatively, you can click and hold the signature, alt + tab to the settings (while holding) and release the mouse button in the signature editor.
Since the new Outlook entered the Global Availability phase, the signature formatting issue should be fixed. The images below show how email signatures behaved when you used drag-and-drop vs when you used copy-and-paste.
Can you see the difference? It’s the same signature.
Dragged & dropped:
Copied & pasted:
It’s not the only way to get your automatic email signature working. But it’s by far the easiest. I’ll list the other methods, but mainly to show why the method above is superior.
There is one more method, which makes a lot of sense if you design email signatures for the whole company.
The only easier method of setting up an email signature is when you don’t have to set it up at all. And yes, you and every other user can have a signature without having to get near the signature settings. Here’s how:
[Update]: This article was last updated on May 31, 2024.
For some people, animated gifs are the essence of the Internet – before them, there was nothing of interest. Gifs have opened our eyes to the magic of ultra-cute, animated kittens, memes and epic fails, to mention a few. But apart from those highly popular and reusable gifs, there is another type – simple animations which in the business world could be deemed as professional. So today, I’ll cover the idea of having animated gifs in email signatures.
Thanks to our atavistic predator instinct, nothing grabs our attention as much as a moving objects next to a static background (that is, regular email content). Animated gifs seem like they are crafted for this purpose exactly. Be careful though, as the line between “attention-grabbing” and “extremely annoying” is finer than you might think.
[Update] This article was first published on July 09, 2013. It begged for a major update, so we did it.
The Outlook email signature location depends on which Outlook you’re dealing with. In this article, I’ll list the possible locations of Outlook signatures and show you how to back up and restore them.
Continue readingMicrosoft Outlook is the go-to email client for most businesses and enterprises. This is no surprise, as it has been around for decades and managed to become the ‘gold standard’ of this software category in the meantime. Outlook has evolved a lot since its first appearance, leading to its supposedly final form, “Outlook 365”. In this article, I’m going to quickly explain what Outlook 365 stands for and how to set up email signatures in this Microsoft-365-powered email client.
It might come as a bit of a surprise, but officially, there’s no such thing as “Outlook 365”. There are two Outlook versions which this name may relate to: Outlook for Microsoft 365 and Outlook on the web. Both come as a part of the Microsoft 365 subscription, which is probably the reason why so many users came to name them “Outlook 365”. This can be very confusing, especially since the name doesn’t explain whether the user means the app installed locally or the webmail version. The name stuck nonetheless and nowadays can be found all over the Internet, including tech community forums and specialist websites.
To be precise, Outlook for Microsoft 365 is the version of the app installed on desktop or laptop computers. It’s the most recent iteration, originating from a long line of apps included in Microsoft Office suites and standalone programs, so you might say it’s the longest known, as it brings to the table all the features and improvements implemented over the years.
Outlook on the web, on the other hand, is the webmail version of Outlook, allowing you to access your email account through your web browser. Besides being part of a Microsoft 365 subscription, it’s also available for organizations using on-premises Microsoft Exchange Server 2016 & 2019. By the way, the name “Outlook on the web” is being used interchangeably with “OWA”. The abbreviation actually stands for “Outlook Web App”, which was the official name of the app used with Microsoft Exchange Server 2013 & 2010, formerly called “Outlook Web Access” in case of Microsoft Exchange Server versions older than 2010. The biggest difference in comparison to Outlook for Microsoft 365 is that you don’t have to install anything on your computer or mobile device to use Outlook on the web.
Learn more about the differences between Outlook versions on this Microsoft’s site
Now, let’s dive in and have a look at individual processes of setting up email signatures in Outlook for Microsoft 365 and Outlook on the web.
Follow the steps below to set up an email signature in the desktop Outlook 365:
Note: Another way to start configuring your email signatures is to go to File (on the ribbon) > Options. Next, in the Outlook Options window, select the Mail tab and click Signatures in the Compose messages section.
Note: The formatting tools offered in the Outlook signature editor are quite basic. If you wish to achieve a more sophisticated and polished design, you can use a free email signature generator to create an advanced signature template. Simply choose Outlook as the target email platform, select one of the many available templates, adjust it to your needs and there you go. Your signature is ready to be copied and pasted into the Outlook editor.
Note: If you didn’t select your signature as the default one, you will still be able to add it manually every time you write a new email. It will be available after clicking the Signature button in the Include group.
That’s all there is to it. If you wish to create more Outlook signatures, simply follow the steps from point 3 onwards. You can create as many of them as you need – they will appear on a list visible after clicking the aforementioned Signature button.
The steps required to configure email signatures in the ”Outlook 365” webmail client are a bit different than in case of the desktop app:
Note: If you wish to achieve a more refined appearance, you can use a free email signature generator with lots of advanced signature templates that you can fill in with all the necessary details and copy into the editor box in Outlook on the web.
Note: It is possible to create and use multiple signatures for a single mailbox – similarly to the Outlook desktop client. Just click the New signature button after you have saved your first signature to create another one.
Once you are done, save changes and close the settings window.
As you can see in the above guides, setting up a professional email signature is a fully manual process. From the company’s viewpoint, it comes with some limitations and risks:
Being aware of those limitations, you may want to change the way email signatures are managed in your organization. Instead of leaving this task to users, many companies decide to manage email signatures centrally.
Building and promoting a company’s brand is a continuous process and every employee interacting with customers or business partners needs to be seen as a brand ambassador. Email correspondence takes up a considerable part of that professional interaction, therefore email signatures should not be underestimated. They are a powerful way to convey the sender’s professionalism and tell the recipients whether the organization cares about its image.
Managing email signatures centrally ensures that they are kept under control and stay up-to-date, consistent in design and aesthetic and are personalized across the whole company. This way, email signatures can be carefully crafted (and implemented organization-wide) to send a strong message that helps the brand, promotes offers and supports the business.
It also allows for automation of a rather unexciting task, letting employees focus on their own work instead. Not to mention getting rid of issues connected to user carelessness or lack of technical skills.
Exchange Online allows for central management of email signatures and disclaimers for the entire Microsoft 365 organization. It is possible to set up email signatures and legal disclaimers, which are added to email messages that enter or leave your organization. To achieve this, it is necessary to create a mail flow rule (with the Append the disclaimer action specified) that adds the required information to email messages. And since mail flow rules may include many different conditions and exceptions, it is also possible to create separate signature templates for different departments or even specific users.
However, the process might turn out to be troublesome for someone doing this for the first time. That is why we’ve prepared a short video guide explaining:
Besides the Exchange admin center, it is also possible to achieve similar results using PowerShell and VBScript. The immediate drawback of these two methods is that the former only works for Outlook on the web (OWA) and the latter only for the desktop client.
Although those management methods are better than setting up all email clients separately, they are still not perfect. They come with a lot of limitations:
The above list is intended to highlight the constraints most commonly faced by businesses and as such is not exhaustive. Read this article to learn more about the limitations of native functionalities
While the above list seems a long one, overcoming all those limitations is easier than you might think. Although they cannot be fixed natively, a dedicated tool, such as CodeTwo Email Signatures 365, can solve all related issues and do much more for your Microsoft 365 email signatures.
The service reinvents handling email signatures in Microsoft 365 organizations:
See the product’s page to learn more and test the tool for free or watch the following short video to learn why companies choose our software:
Canned responses can make your job much easier. They save you from having to do repetitive work and make it quicker to provide helpful answers to recurring questions. This article shows how to use canned responses with Outlook email templates (OFT files as well as with the My Templates add-in) and with email signatures. At last, I’ll show you how to manage canned responses for the whole team or organization at the same time.
This is the second part of the article about canned responses in Outlook. See part 1 in which I explain how to use Outlook Quick Parts.
There are two kinds of Outlook templates: OFT and My Templates. I’ll dive into the first variant first, as it is the better-known one.
OFT (Outlook file template) is a separate file which contains not only the email body but can also include a subject that you define. Here’s how to use them:
Pros:
Cons:
My Templates is a built-in Outlook add-in which lets you add canned responses similarly to Quick Parts, but I find it a bit more intuitive. Here’s how it works:
Pros:
Cons:
I won’t elaborate on how to add and use email signatures. You can refer to this guide if you need instructions on how to set them up.
The email signature feature is usually used for your professional HTML email signature. They often include contact details, company branding, a marketing banner, maybe a legal disclaimer. But if you dare to think a bit out of the box, the signatures feature is perfect for canned responses.
Pros:
Cons:
If you want to centrally manage canned responses (via email signatures) for your team using native options, you can use the following solution:
VBScript: create an HTML Outlook email signature for the whole company – this method uses GPO to create personalized HTML email signatures for the whole company. You can use it to deploy canned responses as well. It deploys signatures to Outlook for Windows. The problem with this solution is that it requires some scripting and HTML knowledge. It also personalizes signatures based on local AD, which is a problem if you use Microsoft Entra ID (Azure Active Directory). It’s also quite problematic when it comes to updates.
Fortunately, there is a third-party alternative which doesn’t suffer from those limitations.
CodeTwo Email Signatures 365 lets you create email signatures for the whole company directly from a web browser.
One of the out-of-the-box examples of use is to manage canned responses for a team or the whole company. You can set up as many canned responses as you need. They can include the message body itself as well as a signature and a relevant disclaimer. Each user (or users belonging to certain groups) will be then able to pick the canned response directly in their Outlook or Outlook on the web.
How to use email signatures as canned responses – see this guide to learn how to set it up.
Multiple email signatures in Outlook seem to be a very useful invention. Why? Firstly, you may need them when sending emails from different email accounts in Outlook. This is a quite common practice when working for more than just one company. Secondly, you may need to respond to some emails as a member of a certain business team or on behalf of that team – it’s not hard to guess that you would need to use different email signatures depending on the recipients. Finally, you may opt to use different signature for internal and external emails – a simple one (for internal messages – it may just include first name, last name, title and phone fields) and an extended one (for external emails – it will contain all contact details, images, logos, etc.).
Let’s then find out how to create multiple email signatures in Microsoft Outlook!
By default the email signature editor in Outlook 2007 does not allow for using tables and table backgrounds. But it is possible to work around this limitation. Here is how to do it:
1. Open the Outlook 2007 E-mail Signature editor.
You can do this either via Tools, Options, Mail Format tab, Signatures…:
[Update]: This article was updated on May 25, 2020.
Have you ever wondered how to make your email signature more attractive? Here’s an idea – add a video! It is as easy and quick as adding a link to your social media page. It will help you boost your company’s brand identity, while simultaneously promoting the video itself. The best thing is that it can greatly increase traffic and it won’t cost you a dime! And don’t forget that you can measure how much traffic your video attracts with Google Analytics (learn how to track campaigns in email signatures).
