set up email signature Archives - Mail-Signatures.com

[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.

Take me to instructions

What’s a professional email signature?

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.

The easiest way to design a working email signature

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.

Add a signature to the new Outlook for Windows

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.

Starting from the Outlook’s main window, the quickest way to open signature settings is to start creating a new email:

Next, go to Message > Signature > Signatures

Once in the signature settings, add a new signature’s name. Now, it’s best to open Outlook and the signature generator side by side. I’m using the + 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.

Save your changes, (optionally) choose the new signature as the default one and then save again. You can’t choose the new signature as the default one until you save it first.

Why not copy and paste the signature?

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:

Email signature in NEW Outlook after drag-and-drop

Copied & pasted:

Email signature in New Outlook after copy-and-paste

Other methods

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.

Switching to classic Outlook and adding the signature there. Copy & paste always worked there, but you’ve switched to the new Outlook for some reason, right? Jumping between those two versions adds some hassle.
Creating the signature from scratch in the signature editor. While it’s always an option, I’ve never actually seen people doing it, unless they only want to add their first and last name.
You don’t have to use the signature generator. Designing a signature in Word and using it in the new Outlook is an option you’re welcome to try. I never recommend it, though. Copy and paste gives similar results to what you see above. And if you drag and drop, signatures from any word processor come with some curious formatting. It will reveal itself once you send out your emails.
You can design your signature in Canva, Photoshop, etc. and use an image instead of an HTML signature. While your formatting will be intact, you’ll lose dark-mode compatibility, easy editing, ability to copy anything and optimal signature size. Also, there’s no point in adding any social buttons, since you can only add one link to the whole image.

There is one more method, which makes a lot of sense if you design email signatures for the whole company.

How to add a professional email signature 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:

Try CodeTwo Email Signatures 365 for free

Company-wide email signatures in OWA with PowerShell

[Update]: We’ve added a way to fix the PowerShell method for your tenant, without the need to contact Microsoft support.

If your company uses Microsoft 365, you can use PowerShell to add a unified email signature for everyone in your organization. I’ll show you a script which adds a unified personalized email signature to every mailbox. This way, everyone who uses Outlook on the web will have an email signature automatically added to their mailbox settings.

Reasons for unifying email signatures

Email signatures are tricky. They can be a single line with your name only or a compact design with the most important contact info. They can also be a cringe-worthy “Sent from my <insert_device_name>” or a monstrosity with multiple banners, a two-page disclaimer and broken layout, to top it all.

The fact is, an email signature is added (and usually expected) in every single email. A signature (or a footer) is a message in itself. It tells, among other things, whether:

you care about details,
you treat your job seriously,
the company cares about its image,
the company wants to be reached.

Every single employee is a brand ambassador. Tendency to generalize is in human nature – when an employee lacks professionalism in a conversation, recipients will often think it’s not only this single person. That’s why, with every bad signature, your brand gets a punch in its face.

Don’t get me wrong, I don’t think the world ends as soon as a bad signature is sent. It’s usually a much slower and sadder process when the brand and the company gradually lose trust. You can either unify email signatures and send a strong message that helps the brand, promotes your offers and supports you, or get a hit with every message sent. I’m only showing one of the methods to unify email signatures.

How it works

Before you run the script to set up email signatures with PowerShell, it is crucial to understand how the method works.

The script gets user information from Entra ID (Azure Active Directory, or AAD) and adds an HTML code of a signature (with those details included) to mailbox settings. At the moment, only Outlook on the web (OWA) can benefit from that. It means that when a user sends an email from Outlook for Mac, “classic” Outlook for Windows, or any client apart from Outlook on the web or the new Outlook for Windows – the signature you set up using this method will not show up.

Also, if your Microsoft 365 user database information is not updated, or is incomplete, the final result will not be attractive or helpful.

There are other methods of unifying email signatures in a company which will work for all email clients. See the video below to learn more:

Required permissions

Using PowerShell to set up Outlook on the web email signatures is possible in every Microsoft 365 organization. However, to execute the script that sets up those signatures, you need to be an admin and have at least some basic grasp of how PowerShell works.

There are a few permissions that you need to have to successfully run the PowerShell script:

Your account needs to be PowerShell-enabled. It means that a global admin might use a simple cmdlet to grant access to a certain user (Set-User -Identity <certain user> -RemotePowerShellEnabled $true)
You need to have User Options and Mail Recipients admin roles assigned.

Get HTML email signature template

Before running the script, you need the HTML code of the email signature template you’ll be using.

The best way to do this is to use the free email signature generator.

Select Microsoft 365 as your email platform

Signature generator - Microsoft 365 email signature

Choose a signature template. You can use the generator to change images and elements which will be the same for every user, like Company name, disclaimer and so on.

Pick email signature template for Outlook on the web

Click Replace user data with Active Directory placeholders and Apply your signature. The first button replaces personal data with placeholders normally used in mail flow rules to automatically personalize users’ data in signatures. Placeholders don’t work this way when setting up OWA signature with PowerShell. The script will change placeholders to Entra ID (Azure Active Directory) data.

Signature generator - Replace user data with placeholders

Generate the HTML signature, copy it and paste into a txt file. I’ve created it in C:\signature.txt for easy access. You can freely modify the HTML code, just remember it’s best to leave the %%AAD placeholders%% intact. The script relies on a certain format of those placeholders to enter relevant user information.

Signature generator - Generate and copy HTML

Set up an HTML email signature for everyone (PowerShell)

In the past, we’ve used Get-AzureAdUser to get user data from Microsoft 365. But since Azure AD module is deprecated, we needed to change it to Microsoft Graph PowerShell SDK.

The cmdlet that’s responsible for setting up signatures (Set-MailboxMessageConfiguration -Signature HTML) has been broken as a result of the signature cloud settings (aka roaming signatures) feature. For some time, the only way to get the script to work was to contact Microsoft support and ask them to disable roaming signatures for your Microsoft 365 tenant. Fortunately, now, Microsoft allows you to disable roaming signatures on your own, with PowerShell:

Set-OrganizationConfig -PostponeRoamingSignaturesUntilLater $true

Learn more about disabling roaming signatures for your organization

Before you run the script, you need to connect to Exchange Online using Connect-ExchangeOnline. If you run into any problems, see this article to learn how to make it work.

You can copy & paste the rest of the script into your PowerShell console:

$users = (Get-AzureADUser | select GivenName, Surname, Title, TelephoneNumber, Mobile, Mail, CompanyName, StreetAddress, City, PostalCode, State, Country) <# Gets all users' data from Entra ID (Azure AD) and saves selected information to an array. If you want to, you can get less or more data or modify the users’ scope. #>

$HTMLsig = Get-Content "C:\signature.txt" <# Saves HTML code of a signature from the signature generator to a variable. Change the path to the location of your file. #>

foreach($user in $users){

$HTMLSigX = ""; <# temporary variable with HTML code of a personalized signature #>

$HTMLSigX = $HTMLsig.replace('%%FirstName%%', $user.GivenName).replace('%%LastName%%', $user.Surname).replace('%%Title%%', $user.Title).replace('%%PhoneNumber%%', $user.TelephoneNumber).replace('%%MobileNumber%%', $user.Mobile).replace('%%Email%%', $user.Mail).replace('%%Company%%', $user.CompanyName).replace('%%Street%%', $user.StreetAddress).replace('%%City%%', $user.City).replace('%%ZipCode%%', $user.PostalCode).replace('%%State%%', $user.State).replace('%%Country%%', $user.Country) <# Replacing placeholders with personal user data #>

Set-MailboxMessageConfiguration $user.Mail -SignatureHTML $HTMLSigX -AutoAddSignature $true -AutoAddSignatureOnReply $true <# Saves the personalized email signature in mailbox settings. It should be available in Outlook on the web right away. The -AutoAddSignature parameter sets the signature as default for new messages and -AutoAddSignatureOnReply does the same for replies. Changing $true parameters to $false prevents the new signatures from being applied automatically. #>
}

After running the script, all users should get their personalized email signature in their Outlook on the web settings:

Outlook on the web personalized email signature

Limitations of PowerShell email signatures

Although useful, the Set-MailboxMessageConfiguration cmdlet is not perfect for managing email signatures – here are some of the reasons why:

First and foremost, changing mailbox settings works only on Outlook on the web (OWA) and the new Outlook for Windows. You can use VBScript to handle the older, (yet still the most popular) Outlook for Windows, but this way you’ll need to use two different methods to handle each signature update. Furthermore, you’d still only have some of the possible email clients handled.
You can’t use embedded images. Which means that in most cases, your recipients will need to intentionally click a dedicated button to see the graphics you so carefully designed for your email signature. Otherwise – images will be blocked.
It’s a bad idea if your Entra ID (Azure AD) is outdated. There’s no way to let users update their AAD properties (unless you want to give them administrative access; but I don’t think you do).
There’s no way to dynamically change the signature if, for example, a certain personal information is missing. It usually ends up with some users having the “Mobile:“ phrase in their signature and nothing next to it.
Each change or update requires you to operate on HTML code, there’s no editor you can use to work on the template’s design.
There’s no easy way to schedule email signature campaigns or use different designs for different recipients.

If you want to be able to manage email signatures for an entire Microsoft 365 organization without those limitations, there’s an easier alternative. CodeTwo Email Signatures 365 lets you manage signatures for all users without any scripting. Signatures are added to emails sent from all email clients and devices. Try it out for free

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How to add signatures to new Outlook for Windows?