Voted 8

How to create HTML signature in Microsoft Outlook

By Angsuman Chakraborty, Gaea News Network

March 15th, 2005

Email signature are by default text messages. However I wanted to create HTML signature (see below) for my email messages. The procedure is supported but not at all straighforward.

Steps:

Go to Tools/Option/Mail Format and set Send in this message format to HTML.
Create a file with .html extension in notepad containing your only HTML text (don't bother about making it correct HTML) and save it. Remember to set Save as Type to HTML

Open it in Internet Explorer and copy it to clipboard using Ctrl-A Ctrl-C after first clicking within the explorer. Now the HTML is copied in proper format to clipboard.
In Microsoft Outlook go to Options/Mail Format/Signature Picker and click on New.
Choose a name for your signature (any name is fine) and click Next.
Paste your signature in the box provided using Ctrl-V.
In Tools/Options/MailFormat ensure that your signature name (chosen earlier) is selected as Use this signature by default.
Test by creating a new email and verifying that the HTML signature is actually included in the created email.

Note: In case of any problems read the instructions carefully again. The instructions are for Microsoft Outlook 2000. If you have a different version adjust accordingly.

Now you know how to create a signature like this:

If you are using this please do leave a comment or trackback from your post.

« Previous

Xavier Le Hericy Says:
March 27th, 2005 at 5:23 pm

I tried it, but I’m still getting the TXT form of the HTML in the message instead of the rendered HTML (and Yes I selected HTML as the default format).

I noticed that, if I try to use a file as the signature as Microsoft recommends, Outlook will not let me select an HTML file, only TXT files are allowed. When I click on the HTML file in Microsoft Explorer it correctly opens in Firefox and is rendered as HTML. Is there any other trick to force Outlook to render the text as HTML?

angsuman Says:
March 29th, 2005 at 3:43 pm

Outlook doesn’t directly allow selecting html file, which is why I wrote the faq in the first place

The trick is in steps 3-6. It does allow cut-n-paste of html text from IE in the signature box. And after pasting you will be able to see your HTML signature.

Please verify that everything mentioned has been done exactly.

If you are seeing html signature in the siganture box and text siganture in new email that is because your default email format is text.

Remember I tested it only using Outlook 2000. For other versions your mileage may vary.

Sherri Says:
June 8th, 2005 at 9:51 am

Worked for me. Thank you for the post. I even managed to make the signature look correct when I convert emails to plain text. Another trick is to force fonts to be in px sized fonts as resizable fonts can be damaged by other people’s html emails. Sigh, I almost never use px sized fonts as I prefer my text to be resizable. Too bad this portion is affected by other people’s default font settings.

Anthria Says:
February 23rd, 2006 at 11:14 am

for those who have messages appearing in text format.

Make sure you configure your mail to HTML format. how?

click tools>options>Mail format>message format> HTML

goodluck!!!

Angsuman Chakraborty Says:
February 24th, 2006 at 1:11 am

Thanks for the tip.

Vanessa Richard Says:
March 10th, 2006 at 1:32 am

I tried making a htnl signature with images and company logo but putting the html file in the signature folder of microsoft outlook in windows. It worked fine and I could see the signature perfect my problem is that the signature does not auto check the spelling while typing in the area which is provided between the company logo and the signature below. i.e. like how it use to show the red line below the spelling mistake. So please let me know if there’s a solution for this.

Email me if you find anything.

thomas Says:
May 31st, 2006 at 1:15 am

I tired. Inside the signature preview, it is working fine. But when it comes under the new mail I compose, its not showing properly. Should I need to enable something in the outlook new mail window? Email me if you can solve this issue. Thanks.

Angsuman Chakraborty Says:
May 31st, 2006 at 5:10 am

Check in your Options/Mail Format to ensure that you are configured to send mails in HTML format.

Debbie Danz Says:
June 20th, 2006 at 12:45 pm

We’re creating an Outlook signature with a jpeg of our logo. All is well until we attempt to reply to one of these e-mails or forward — the logo drops off and shows >. Any ideas?

Angsuman Chakraborty Says:
June 20th, 2006 at 1:12 pm

Check my comment above. You can always Insert-Signature to add your signature (while in HTML format).

chillini Says:
August 8th, 2006 at 10:18 am

I’ve been using a jpg of a user’s biz card, and it works fine, but then at some point it stops working. Just wondering if there’s a way to secure this signature so that if you are downloading pictures/html automatically (vulnerability city!)it can’t alter this sig?

M E-L Says:
August 21st, 2006 at 8:58 am

Using this, thanks for the tip!

Gideon Says:
October 6th, 2006 at 10:19 am

Great tip - worked well; especially with Open Office Writer.
Thank you

cb Says:
December 6th, 2006 at 8:43 pm

Thanks for the tip. I have tried this and it somewhat works for me. I am using Outlook 2003, so maybe thats why i have a problem. I have completed all of the steps as mentioned above, but when it comes to opening a new message, the signature is stuck at the top of the space where I can compose the message and wont move down, even with a few presses of the enter key. So my message text is writing over the top of the signature. Anyone have any idea of why??

vlaka Says:
December 13th, 2006 at 11:47 pm

having similar probs to most of u here.
Signature is in HTML but sometimes attached pic (which is hosted on work server) is sent in the emails as an attachment and sometimes wont appear all together.

Any ideas?
Really getting annoying!

kuhlero Says:
January 3rd, 2007 at 3:37 pm

Awesome, got it to work for me…however how do I change the hypertext to my email address and not my file host.

dave dawson Says:
February 22nd, 2007 at 5:44 am

I made the misstake of ccliccking ‘view source and then copying it… just press ctrl A, ctrl C

Stephanie Says:
April 3rd, 2007 at 3:39 pm

Thanks for the tip. Do you know if there is a way to use style sheets? I am trying to have the font appear as Helvetica and then if the user does not have it, I would like it to appear as Arial.

Thanks!

Angsuman Chakraborty Says:
April 4th, 2007 at 9:19 am

Use inline styles.

catherine hierho;zer Says:
April 25th, 2007 at 9:05 pm

I have wrote a book in yahoo note pad now i need to transfer it in to html and get it out of note pad , i have no clue how to do this . help

gavin Says:
April 27th, 2007 at 1:04 am

Incredible tip - thankyou hugely

unfortunately it doesn’t quite work for me with what i am using - it shows itself perfectly working with the correct parameters in the signature preview box, but when i have opened a new mail it only comes up with a few words, a small gap then a large red “X”, then a large gap and only a few more words!! any ideas?

gavin Says:
April 27th, 2007 at 1:14 am

great tip!! having some troubles though - it works perfectly in the preview, but when making an email it shows only a few worsds, then below a large red “X”, then a large gap and a few more words!! any ideas? Cheers!

aarsa Says:
May 7th, 2007 at 5:13 am

Hello Everyone. Im trying to adda a asignature to my company email. I use Lotus Notes. I did a nice gif with my name and company logo but when i add it to my signature it is sending it as an attachment. How could i make a gif image into html in order to send it as a signature and not as an attachment. Thanks in advance for your help.

kevin Says:
June 26th, 2007 at 2:16 pm

With a lot of searching I found this on the internet. It solved the problem with images not showing properly. In my case with outlook 2003 the folder was 11.0 instead of 9.0. Hope this can help.

http://www.tek-tips.com/viewthread.cfm?qid=1353596&page=8

Hal Says:
August 3rd, 2007 at 10:38 am

Worked great for me in Outlook 2007 and in Hotmail. In many ways this solution should be obvious given that you can’t directly enter HTML into Word but that you can cut/paste into it. Thanks!

Joey Says:
September 5th, 2007 at 1:30 pm

nice tip. tried it and it worked ok in the signature window. but when i compose a new mail, the sig doesn’t display properly. i have my message format defaulted as HTML. any suggestions?

paul Says:
September 6th, 2007 at 8:00 pm

hi i have a problem that seems to be the same as others however i can’t seem to fix it. i have set my signature as a little html. Inside is a little gif of the company logo. However the logo wont appear unless i put this logo on a server and have the html call it, which i dont want to do because 1) i dont have a server and 2) i want it to be attached to the email so that it is alwayse shown. How can I have it sent attached to the signature with my email?

Ty Says:
November 22nd, 2007 at 2:09 pm

Hi there. I have an issue. First off, I have everything set to HTML as requested. The file has also been saved as an html. I feel like I\’m almost there, but I\’m missing a step. What\’s happening is:
When I attach the signature (I\’ve already gone in and added the sig. via the \

Paramjeet Singh Says:
December 17th, 2007 at 9:00 am

10x a lots. Its working very fine for me.

Thomas Says:
January 29th, 2008 at 6:26 am

It works!!! Thanks very much!

nicoleta Says:
February 18th, 2008 at 3:02 am

it works perfectly in the preview, but when making an email it shows only a few worsds, then below a large red “X”, then a large gap and a few more words!! any ideas?

Darren Says:
March 12th, 2008 at 10:26 am

Hi,

I currently have 40 users with individual signatures on.

I would like to add a extra bit onto each signature but would be getting updated every other week.

Is there a way that i can have a section of the signature to be looked up from another area i.e. excel or internet?

Thanks

sylvia Says:
March 15th, 2008 at 8:02 am

Great help,

I also had problems with the text but found some solutions.
1. Text can\’t use styles at all. You need to format text inline like this WebView Designs Inc
2.Don\’t use any HTML tags just and
3.If it still doesn\’t look right once you bring it in to Outlook do the following:
create a new e-mail right click on your signature
- go to e-mail signatures
- select your e-mail signature
- format it the way you want then select Replace to save your work.

Also make sure to check your settings in Outlook
- Options/mail format/html options unclick \”When an HTML message contains pictures…\” this will prevent your image from showing.

sylvia Says:
March 15th, 2008 at 8:04 am

sorry! the formatting for the text should look like this WebView Designs Inc

you need to remove the ? in the code

Nathan Cope Says:
March 20th, 2008 at 11:03 pm

Thanks so much for your solution!

I had been trying to get this working for a client for ages and all I could get was the text version of the HTML in the signature.

Finally I came across your solution and now it is all sorted out. Phew!

BTW, I couldn\\\’t get notepad to save in any format except .txt but it seemed to work fine anyway and this was with Outlook 2003.

arie Says:
March 26th, 2008 at 9:27 pm

hello,

I tried to put the signatures .. but its not work, is that because i\’m using outlook 2003 ?

thanks

Gary Says:
May 18th, 2008 at 4:20 pm

Hi, is there a way of writing JavaScript to the signature?.
I have written a live clock and included at the bottom of my HTML signature, but when uploaded , the clock is static.
Is there a setting I am missing?

Thankyou

john Says:
June 1st, 2008 at 7:46 am

Thanks for those useful tips.
I was looking for a tool to help creating signatures, and found this nice online generator

Jamie Says:
June 2nd, 2008 at 11:28 pm

Thanks for the tip.
This works with Outlook 2007 nicely
Cheers,
Jamie

ayan Says:
June 12th, 2008 at 12:10 pm

I have an sig. in .BMP format. how could i add this sig. into the form of .HTML in Microsoft Outlook? sugest me please.

Crisjo Says:
July 31st, 2008 at 1:07 am

hola a todos, mi problema es el siguiente, en mi empresa usamos la firma con el logo d la empresa y los datos, usamos outlook express y todo va bien, excepto que un compañero tiene microsoft outlook y ahi no me funciona la firma. Está realizada mediante codigo en html y llama a una imagen.
Como podría lograr que me cogiese la firma microsoft outlook?
Gracias por adelantado, un saludo.

CK Says:
July 31st, 2008 at 6:48 pm

HOW DO I ADD LOGO.GIF IN OUT LOOK SIGNATURE TO DOWNLOAD FROM WEB SITE
I WOULDNT LIKE TO ATTACH THE PICTURE

ANY THOUGHTS

Gladson Says:
November 18th, 2008 at 12:24 am

I tried this…Itz working… But some problem in that.. The Html file that i added had some Gif Files..(Animations are there) But when i add it as my signature, the animatio property is not working… Now itz just like a jpg…. how to make my signature animated?

Jewel Ahmed Says:
November 28th, 2008 at 3:24 am

Nice things….

Jeff Says:
January 30th, 2009 at 4:19 pm

For everyone who is having trouble with the red X’s, try unchecking the box for “Use Microsoft Office Word 2003 to edit e-mail messages” located in Tools > Options > Mial Format tab. I was having troubles with text contained in marquees that would show as large red X’s. Apparently when this is opened by Word, it has trouble with that HTML tag. Unchecking that box fixed the problem.

gyan Says:
February 13th, 2009 at 1:43 am

I was having this same issue in Outlook 2003 but I found out what I was doing wrong. When you create/edit your signature in Outlook (the Edit Signature dialog) you *think* it’s a text editor where you paste in your html code (i.e. “…”) but it’s not! It’s an html control that will simply display what you type. So if you type (or paste) in your html code it will show that.

The solution, as some described above, is to display your html page in IE. With the html rendered you copy the page (in other words you are copying the signature as you want it to look like; not it’s raw html code) then paste that into the signature editor in Outlook. The signature editor will render the html code properly and it should like they way you want it to — you shouldn’t see raw html within it. Once you’ve done this you’re good to go.

On a side note, how many years has MS been doing this? It’s very sad that simple things like this are — and continue to be — such problems. Very sad indeed.

Hope this helps someone!

langyaw Says:
February 16th, 2009 at 8:57 am

I have a sig in html with javascript for random text. it works fine in IE, but is not visible in Outlook.
any workarounds?

wulfran Says:
March 12th, 2009 at 2:08 pm

PERFECT!

Dana Says:
April 17th, 2009 at 8:42 pm

Thanks for the tutorial. One thing to note: It won’t bring the format over correctly if you have CSS in your original signature file (like I did) I had to fix my font type, color, and sizes inside Outlook as it didn’t bring the CSS info over unfortunately.

cheryl Says:
June 17th, 2009 at 6:43 pm

I’m trying to insert a LOGO into outlook signatures…Outlook 2000. Any suggestions? Can do it 2003 and higher….but we have 2000

Dave Says:
June 24th, 2009 at 6:08 pm

I’m not clear on this…

All I want to do is use a particular image (stored on my web server) as my signature. I don’t want to attach the image, so I want to use HTML.

But this method seems to just paste the image into the signature (same as inserting the image itself), not insert the HTML that calls up the image from my web serer. Hence, this method is still attaching the image to the email.

Am I doing something wrong? Thanks.

Tracy Says:
July 6th, 2009 at 10:07 pm

My notepad does not give me an option to save in .html only .txt Thoughts?

John Gallagher Says:
July 14th, 2009 at 7:54 pm

Very easy to use! Thanks

Jep Says:
July 23rd, 2009 at 8:34 am

I am not familiar with the HTML file.

All I want is to create my personalize signature with logo’s and different text font and color.Please give me ways in more friendly approach. Take note that I am using Outlook 2000.

Big Thanks!

richard Says:
August 18th, 2009 at 7:11 pm

great solution

Gregg V Says:
September 9th, 2009 at 6:00 am

Your directions were successful with the exception of maintaining the

in the body. http://www.universityhealthcenter.net/stationery/index.html

I cannot seem to keep the text that would be written in the body of the email to stay off the left margin. Please advise.

Thommy Says:
September 10th, 2009 at 12:13 pm

Worked perfectly! Thanks

pelli Says:
September 10th, 2009 at 11:13 pm

thank you so much - i been trying to get my logo to work in outlook signature and you have solved the issue

keep up the good work

Monica Fineis Says:
September 15th, 2009 at 12:16 pm

Thank you, this worked!

Clint Says:
September 30th, 2009 at 4:20 am

This worked, thanks, but now I’ve made a new image with the same name to replace my first image, but it seems that I can’t get Outlook 2000 to clear its cache. The new image is on my webserver and the old one has been deleted. Do you know a manual way of doing this?

Mike V. Says:
October 8th, 2009 at 3:40 pm

Ok, I’m not the least bit computer savvy, but I’ve managed to create a signature with my company’s logo w/ hyperlink to website via Microsoft FrontPage (Outlook takes me there when “advanced editing”).

The logo and hyperlink work fine when composing new emails, but when I reply to or forward an email that has an attachment, I get a red X where the image should be. WTF??? I use Outlook 2000, if that helps.

Any assistance would be greatly appreciated!

ashley-marie Says:
December 1st, 2009 at 4:20 pm

This is semi-complex is it possible to just put an html script at the end of an email?

RAB Says:
January 11th, 2010 at 10:40 pm

I found that when I changed to the 2003 word as my email editor, I too had lost my signatures. All I had at the bottom of my emails was a dotted line. I then right clicked onto that dotted line and it brought up a drop file. I then clicked onto ‘email signature’ then ‘general’ and selected ‘none’ for keep all formatting. I then opened a new email and there was my signature……