Email signatures can be so much more than a digital business card. Outlook HTML Signatures are a great way to promote your business or product, you can use banner or even call to action buttons even you want.
The problem is that most people don’t know how to properly add HTML signatures in Outlook. You can’t create them in Outlook self, because the signature editor in Outlook doesn’t support HTML code.
In this article, I will explain how and where you can add the HTML code for your signature and also give you some tips and tools on how you can create your own Outlook HTML Signatures for free
Add HTML Signature to Outlook
Let’s first take a look at how to add an HTML Signature to Outlook. When you create a signature in one of the online tools or let one design by a web designer, you will receive an HTML file with your signature.
To add your new HTML signature in Outlook we are going to create an empty placeholder signature and replace the contents of it with our HTML signature.
Time needed: 5 minutes.
- Create a new empty signature in Outlook
In Outlook go to File > Options > Mail and click on Signatures…
- Create a new empty signature
Click on New to add a signature, give it a recognizable name, and click Ok.
Close the signature dialog and close Outlook
- Open the signatures folder
Open your explorer and navigate to the following path by copy and paste the following path in the address bar:
%userprofile%\AppData\Roaming\Microsoft\Signatures
- Find the placeholder signature
We need to find the HTM file that we have created as a placeholder. In the signatures folder, you will see files and folders for each signature that you have created in Outlook. Our new placeholder signature is also in this folder.
If you don’t see the file extensions, then enable File name extensions in the view tab.
1. Right-click on the .htm file that starts with the signature name that we have just created (coffee in this case)
2. Select Open with and choose Notepad
- Insert the HTML signature
We are going to replace the contents of the file with the HTML code from our new signature:
Select all content in the HTM file (Ctrl + A) and paste the new HTML signature over it.
Save and close the file.
- Test your new signature
Open Outlook, create a new mail and select your new signature to test it.
Outlook Html Signature Templates
You can create your own HTML Signature but sometimes is it easier to start with a template. Online are a couple of good free email signature template generators that you can use to get started.
Hubspot
Hubspot offers a free email signature generator that you can use to create your signature. It comes with 6 free templates that you choose from. By default it will show a link below your signature “Created with HubSpot”, but you can easily turn it off at the top of the first tab where you can select your template.
Exclaimer
Exclaimer is a professional signature manager that you can use to set a signature for all your employees. But they also offer a free signature generator. I have used the Exclaimer generator in the example above.
It comes with a signature created by line, but you can simply remove it in Outlook after you added your signature.
Wrapping up
I hope this article helped you with adding your Outlook HTML Signature. If you want to know more about Outlook signatures, like how you can export or edit them, then check out this article.
If you have any questions, just drop a comment below.
I followed all the steps carefully, however the images did not show up in the signature.
Nice article. Do you know if you are able to place variables in the HTML which reference your active directory? For instance in Office 365, I’m using Outlook desktop, but I want to reference and source the data from the exchange, like my telephone number, title and email, etc…
I believe the variables for the above are %%PhoneNumber%%, %%Title%% and %%Email%%.
Yes that is possible I believe, but only when you create the signatures on the Exchange server with a mailflow rule