Create email signatures in Outlook on Windows so your recipients know more about you, including your phone number and website address. Your personalized signature can be automatically added to the end of your messages and email responses, or only to certain messages.
Need help making a professional signature? Create your signature in the Email & Office Dashboard, then add it to Outlook.
- Open Outlook for Windows. (Don't have the app? Here's how to download it.)
- Go to the Home tab and select New Email.
- Under Select signature to edit, select New.
- Enter a name for your signature and select OK.
- Under Choose default signature, use the dropdown list to select your new signature for New messages if you want to add it to the end of all composed messages, and Replies/forwards if you want to add it to all messages you respond to or forward.
- Under Edit signature, enter your personal signature.
- Select OK to save your signature and return to your message draft.
- Image: Use the picture button to add your logo.
- Link: Use the hyperlink button to add your website's address. You can also right-click an image added to your signature to make it a hyperlink, such as to make an image of a social media icon link to your social page.
Related steps
Here are some other ways you can customize your signature:
More info
Note: These steps will only create a signature that's available when using Outlook on Windows. If you use other email clients, you'll also need to create signatures for them.
In this Process Automation tutorial, we will showcase how to create, update or deploy a Windows Outlook signature for one or multiple users using a template. This workflow automation eliminates inconsistency throughout the company’s email signature and avoids having users look for branded collaterals.
Note: The workflow targets users who are currently logged into their machine. The process modifies the HKEY CURRENT USER registry key. Refer to “How to deploy a default email signature in Outlook” for more details about technical details about the method.
Disclaimer:
To be able to implement this tutorial, you will need access to the full version of Goverlan Reach and its Process Automation framework. If you don’t currently own a valid license, you can download a free version of our remote access software on our website. The 15-day trial is free and no credit card is required.
Process Automation Step 1
First, we must create a signature in Outlook that we will be copying to the destination users PC. In this case, we created a signature template called Goverlan as shown below.
Process Automation Step 2
On the machine that you created the Outlook Signature, open the location %APPDATA%\Microsoft\Signatures. You will find files that correspond to the name of the Signature that we created in step 1. Copy these files to a centralized location as we will be copying them to the same folder path location that corresponds to the user account of each target machine using a Scope Action later on in this tutorial.
Process Automation Step 3
Now create a Scope Action, set it to the Machines Scope and add the Machine with the corresponding logged in user. Proceed to Actions. If you have never created a Scope Action before, please refer to the below video and the Scope Action Creation Basics article for more information.
Process Automation Step 4
You will now create 4 separate Actions:
1st Action – Close Outlook.exe process (Outlook must be closed FIRST in order for this method to work.)
Add/Remove > Execute Computer Action > Processes > Terminate a Process
Process Name: Outlook.exe
Terminate Child Processes: True
2nd Action – Copy Signature files (From Step 2.)
Add/Remove > Execute Computer Action > File and Directory Actions > Transfer a Directory
Source Directory Local Path: C:\users\vcruz\documents\Goverlan Signature (this is the full path of the location of the signatures. You can use \\networkpath\folder if you stored the files on a network drive.)
Destination Directory Local Path: C:\users\username\Appdata\Roaming\Microsoft\Signatures
Overwrite Existing File: True
Include Sub-Directories: True
3rd Action – Delete Outlook First-Run Registry Key
Add/Remove > Execute Computer Action > Registry Actions > Delete a Value
Registry Key Path: HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Office\XX.X\Common\MailSettings (The xx.x must be replaced by your Outlook version, simply open REGEDIT on any machine with Outlook installed and confirm the version number.)