Friday, November 28, 2008

Standard Outlook Signature File

Issue:
Implement standard Outlook signature file for all users.

Quick/Visual/Learning:
Open Outlook and create a signature file that you will use as a template.

Note added 4/22/09 Here is a link to a company that sales software that looks like it makes this easy to do and manage. They promote it for email disclaimers but it also does signatures. After watching the demo it looks pretty good.


Enter a name for a blank template file (SigTemplate in this example) and click next

Click on the “Advanced Edit…” Button and click Yes to the warning message.

Enter text in the template as a placeholder. Instead of pressing Enter at the end of each line, use Shift Enter to avoid the blank line problem. Also if you want to specify a color do not leave the font color as auto, change it to what you want (otherwise the color may change on you).

You can insert a logo or picture if needed.

You can right click the logo and select to make it a hyperlink to a web page.
Close and Save the file. Click OK to get out.

You now have the template in your signature file directory. Note: You may need to enable viewing of hidden directories C:\Documents and Setting\UserNameHere\Application Data\Microsoft\Signatures

If you have a logo/picture there will be a directory with the associated picture files. You will need to copy both the .htm file and the directory to each computer where you want to implement the standard signature. Place the files, as indicated before, in the directory

C:\Documents and Setting\UserNameHere\Application Data\Microsoft\Signatures

Be sure to replace UserNameHere with the profile directory name listed in the Documents and Settings folder of the target machine.


Now the new users just needs to open Outlook, select the signature, and edit the signature text.

Here are Example instructions for the workstation users.
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New Outlook signatures files have been place on your computer. These files are intended to be a company standard. If you are currently using a different signature file please replace those signature files with these new ones. You will first need to modify the signatures so that they contain your correct job title and name. These are quick changes so please take a couple of minutes and do this now.

Open Outlook and edit the Outlook signature files.

Click on Tools/Options/Mail Format tab/Signatures button.

Edit the SigTemplate file. Do not change the font, just select the text "Name", enter your name, select the text "Title" and enter your title. Enter the correct phone number.Click OK after you making these changes.

Click OK to exit this window and go back to the previous window.

Select the SigTemplate from the "Signature for new messages:" drop down box.
Click OK to finish.

Other links:

http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/outlook/HA011189141033.aspx

http://www.howto-outlook.com/howto/signatures.htm

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Check out http://sourceforge.net/projects/gensignfromldap for a tool that can be run from a logon script that will generate Outlook signatures based on templates and LDAP/Active Directory values.
It also comes with a simple wizard to generate the templates from existing Outlook signatures.