How to Make a Signature in Outlook in 2 Different Ways

Microsoft Outlook lets you create and add signatures to your email messages to give your recipients a hint about your professional details.

You can let Outlook automatically add your signature to every email message you create. You also have the option to manually add it yourself.

Want to know how to make a signature in Outlook? Stick with me for a few minutes as I take you through the easy steps to do just that.

First, what’s an Outlook signature and why should you use it?

Why You Should Use a Signature in Your Emails

A signature is a standardized block of text typically added to the end of email messages. The details in a signature can include your name, title, and contact information.

Outlook allows you to add a link, business card, or image. You can even add your social media icons and format your signature text to make it more robust.

Benefits of Email Signatures

Some of the benefits of adding a signature in your emails include:

• Professionalism and legitimacy: A consistent signature can convey a powerful message that says your business is well-established.
• Increased brand awareness: If every employee in your company sends out corporate emails with your brand, it won’t take very long before partners, clients, and prospects recognize your brand.
• Social proof: Adding one or more social icon can increase your recipients’ trust in you, your brand, or your company. The number of your followers (or company followers) or other social stats can also improve your credibility.
• Personal association: Adding your picture to your email signature can encourage your recipients to make a personal connection with you.
• Openness to communication: Your email signature with a digital business card tells the person receiving the email that you are open to communication. It makes it easy for people to reach out to you using other communication channels apart from email.
• Promotes your products or services: You can use your email signature to let those reading your email learn about your offers, products, or services.
• Drives traffic to your website: If you have a website, adding a signature is a great way to bring targeted traffic to your website. Adding your website link or URL to the signature can encourage your email recipients to click and visit your website.

How to Create and Save a New Signature in Outlook

You need to create your signature and save it before you can add it to the emails you create in Outlook.

The steps vary slightly depending on the version of Outlook you use.

Outlook 2007 – 2010 Version

1. Open Outlook
2. Click New Email on the ribbon to create a blank email message
3. In the Message window, click the Signature option on the menu bar and then select Signatures…

4. A Signatures and Stationery window pops up. Click New in the E-mail Signature tab
5. Enter a name for your new signature in the New Signature box and click the OK button

6. Enter the text you want to use as your signature in the Edit signature box
7. Apply any formatting you want, including font type, size, indentation, and more (optional)
8. Insert a business card, hyperlink, or picture (optional)
9. Click OK to finish creating your new signature

The new signature has been created but it won’t appear in the message. You need to insert it into email messages if you want it to appear. We’ll get to that in the second part of this article.

Newer Outlook Versions

1. Start Outlook and open a new email message
2. Select Signature on the Message menu
3. Click Signatures

Note that the location of the Message menu and Signature button can be in two different places, depending on whether you are replying to or composing a new email message. The size of your Outlook window can also affect the location of the options.

4. Click New under Select signature to edit
5. Type in a name for your new signature in the New Signature box
6. Compose your new signature in the Edit signature window

Note that you can format your signature with plain text just as in the older versions. If you want a more robust signature, you can compose and format the signature in Microsoft Word and then copy and paste the text into the Edit signature window.

7. Add elements, such as a logo, image, link, or social media icons (optional)
8. Setup the following under Choose default signature:
   • E-mail account: Select an email account to associate with your new signature. Note that you can create multiple signatures for each of your email accounts.
   • New messages: Use this option to automatically add your new signature (or any other one you prefer) to the new email messages you create. Choose none (the default setting) if you don’t want this to happen.
   • Replies/forwards: Use this option to add a select signature (new or old) to messages you reply to or forward. Choose none (the default setting) if you don’t want this to happen.
9. Click OK to create and save your new signature

How to Manually Insert a Signature in Outlook

Now that we’ve seen how to make a signature in Outlook, let’s learn how to manually add it to the emails you create.

If you have already created and configured Outlook to automatically add your signature to emails, the signature will appear as soon as you create a new email message.

However, if you’ve set up your email not to appear automatically, you need to insert it each time you create a new message.

Here’s how to manually insert your signature:

1. Start Outlook
2. Create a new email message
3. Click Signature in the Message window
4. Select and insert signature option you want to use from the drop-down list

Conclusion

Now that you’ve learned how to make a signature in Outlook, you can choose to manually add them to your email messages or allow Outlook to do it for you automatically.

While you’re still here, I invite you to check out this article to learn other amazing Outlook features.