How to Create an HTML Outlook Signature

One of the most annoying things about configuring Outlook is adding a signature to your emails.
The method Outlook offers is fine for creating a signature fit for the 90s but you can achieve so much more using HTML.

I’ll be using the 2010 version of Outlook in this post but this works just as well in other versions too.

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The Classic Outlook Signature

This is the default method. It’s simple and effective if you like AS400 design. Nothing could be easier:

Go to File (Fichier)–>Options:

Next, in the “Mail” (Courrier) section, click “Signatures”

Click “New” (Nouveau) to create a new signature and type your chosen text in the box at the bottom:

Note: Don’t forget to choose the right email account if you have more than one and the signature to use for new messages.

As you can see, the formatting options are very limited. You will soon get frustrated trying to create a signature that looks appealing. I also recommend not using images as these are sent as attachments with your email. Thanks in advance mobile device users

The HTML Outlook Signature

So, now we’ve looked at how it was done 20 years ago, let’s see what we can improve using Outlook.

As you can guess, we are going to use HTML to create our signature. Cue your inner geek breaking out the Visual Studio! A simple Word file will do just as well, though.

The Word solution is extremely useful if you are not using images. We are going to use one to show you why.

First, create your signature in Word:

When you have finished your signature, save the document in HTML format:

Unfortunately for you, Word downloads your image even if you give it a web path. There is only one solution here: to edit the HTML directly:

Here, we just need to replace the local path with the image URL. The benefit of this is that images are never sent as attachments. Another big advantage is that you can change the image in all your emails dynamically, even those you have already sent!

To include your HTML signature in Outlook, simply copy the HTML file to the following (Windows 7) directory:
C:\Users\username\AppData\Roaming\Microsoft\Signatures\

If you go back into Outlook’s options, you should see your new signature:

Of course, if you are already familiar with HTML, there’s no point using Word. Your preferred web editor will be much more efficient.