How to insert HTML signature into Outlook

Pavel Kovář10. 1. 20210 Comment0

MS Outlook allows you to create your own e-mail signature (footer). You can use basic formatting options, such as text color, link, etc. In many cases, this is definitely a sufficient solution.

However, inserting your own HTML signature, which allows for more advanced formatting, is a bit more complicated, and you will learn how to insert an HTML signature into Outlook in this tutorial.

How to create a new email signature in Outlook

1. When composing a new message, on the Message tab, in the Include group, click Signature, and then click Signatures.

2. We will now create our new signature. Click on the New button. A window will open with a field where we enter the name of the signature, eg Company Signature. Then confirm the creation by clicking the OK button.

In the right part of the dialog window we can select for which e-mail address the signature will be the default. So we will choose the E-mail account for which we want to set the signature (eg mujfiremni@email.cz) and then the default template for New messages and the default template for Replies and forwarded messages (these templates may differ).

3. If we are satisfied with an ordinary signature (not HTML), we can use the editing content field. We can create a signature here using basic font styles, similar to Word. This makes it easy to create a simple and fully functional signature.

How to set HTML signature in Microsoft Outlook

Since the official support for inserting and editing custom HTML signatures for e-mails directly in the application has ended since Outlook 2007, inserting and editing HTML signatures is a bit complicated, but it can be done with a little patience.

1. In the first step, we will move to the folder where we will place the file with our HTML signature. To do this, go to the Windows Start menu and open the Run application (keyboard shortcut WIN + R).

Windows XP – Click on Start and immediately see the Run application in the menu, select it.
Windows 7 – Click on Start and look for Run in the search field and open the application (basically the search field can replace this application and we can continue directly in it).
Windows 10 – Click on Start and start typing Run and search for the desired application, which we then select (basically the search box can replace this application and we can continue directly in it).
For other versions of the Windows operating system, the procedure will be very similar to one of the previous ones.

2. Once we have the Run application running (or directly the search box in the Start menu), type or copy the following path %appdata%\Microsoft\Signatures and confirm with the Enter key.

3. We should now be in our working folder with the signatures themselves. If we have done everything correctly so far, we should also see 3 files here (in older versions it may not be exactly 3), which have the same name as the name of our new signature.

4. The most important file for us is now the .HTM extension. We will delete this file or move it to another folder. Instead of this file, we will now insert the file with our HTML signature that we created or received from the person who created it for us. The file needs to be named exactly the same as the previous one, including the .htm extension (not .html).

CAUTION: Sometimes you may have problems with filenames that contain accents and spaces, so it’s a good idea to avoid these characters and choose a name such as CompanySignature instead of Company Signature.

5. If we have done everything correctly, in the Signatures and Templates administration (see the section on creating a new e-mail signature), we will now see a nice, formatted signature next to our signature in the content field and we can easily edit the data in it.

ATTENTION: Since Outlook has stopped supporting these HTML e-mail signatures directly since version 2007, when editing in the editing window, we may delete an extra space and the signature will fall apart. If this happens to you, you will probably need to repeat the whole procedure, and if you still do not succeed, write to the person who created the HTML signature to modify the necessary data and send you a new version of the HTML file.

Add a signature to a message in Outlook

1. If we have selected a default signature for our e-mail box, the signature will be added automatically after the content of the message.

2. If you do not have a default signature, you can easily attach it to each message. On the Message tab, in the Include group, click the Signature button, and then select the signature that you want to attach.