Email signatures give persons quick access to your primary contact information. If you are using Microsoft Outlook, how do you set this up and what things should you consider?

In Outlook, go to the tools menu and choose Options. In the dialog box, choose the “Mail Format” tab. Look for the “Signatures…” button and click it.

On the next dialog, you can create a signature. Click the “New” button. Type a name to identify the signature. For example, you can simply type your first name. If you have multiple email accounts, you might put additional reference to which signature applies.

In the lower part of the box is where you can type the information about how best to contact you. If most of your correspondence is electronic, you may choose just to put your email, web, cell and/or tel references. I find it also useful to display more than one item in each line thus keeping it tightened up vertically. If you have a very tall signature, it makes it harder to see the original text and your reply all in one screen without scrolling.

At the top-right of the dialog box, you can choose to include the signature on new messages (that’s for sure) and also if you want it on your replies. If you reply back and forth many times and put a signature on EVERY message, your conversation thread becomes a little distracting with signature info. However, you can choose to include signature on replies and then choose to manually delete it as needed in the cases of long back and forth conversation emails.

As a final note, many times persons are inclined to put a logo image in their signature. As tempting as this might be as part of your branding, this has some problems inasmuch as this can cause some complications for the recipient. It often happens that the logo gets tagged as an “attachment” (paper clip icon in your email list view). The problem with this is when you are searching for that one email where someone had sent you an attachment but ALL the messages have an attachment, the search becomes harder. For me, it is much simpler and nicer to not do logo graphics. There are some complex techniques around it, but that will be possibly for future discussion!