Email Signatures

Email Signatures at the bottom of email messages are a great place to list your contact information as well as a tagline or a line of news and/or links to your website, blog, and wiki. In fact, I'm surprised everyone doesn't have one.

I love the convenience of having my phone and fax number at the bottom of each email I send out - now you can too!

If you're one of those people who would like to have an email signature but isn't sure how to create one, here's a quick step-by-step for Outlook users.

First, click on the New button as though you're going to send out a new message then click on the arrow by the Options button. It's important that you click on the arrow so that you see a list of options (note red arrow). Click on E-mail Signature.

A popup window will display. If this is your first email signature, follow these steps:

1) Type in a name for your signature into the text box at the top of the popup window.

2) In the bottom box, type in your email signature.

3) Once you've typed in the content, highlight it and select a font face and size from the pulldowns at the top of the text box.

4) Next, highlight specific type you'd like to bold, italicize or underline. You'll see options for left-justify, justify and right justify, click which is ever appropriate for your email.

5) If you'd like to add color to your type, highlight words that you'd like to color then select the arrow by the A symbol. Select the color that best suits your branding. If possible, enter RGB numbers of your corporate branding to give your email a polished look.

6) Finally, highlight text you'd like to link to your website, blog, or wiki and click on the link icon to enter the URL.

Also, you have the option to add images to your signature. I don't recommend this as some people don't have HTML-enabled email clients and will just see a blank box, whereas text will always display.

Click OK and your signature is saved and will display each time you send out an email. If you'd like to edit your signature, just go through the same process after selecting your signature name from the E-Mail Options popup window.