Creating Windows mail email signatures with images and fancy fonts is not very difficult and on this page I shall provide detailed step by step instructions.
Windows Mail email signatures can be plain text or more decorative. The latter can be created as HTML files that can be imported into the program and attached with your emails. If you know HTML, you would be able to write the code from scratch or fine tune the layout as per requirements.
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But even if you don’t, Vista Windows Mail email client has a barebones WYSIWYG (What You See Is What You Get) HTML editor with which you can produce compelling email signatures.
Creating a fancy email signature in Windows Mail
The first step is making sure that you can compose emails in HTML format. Go to “Tools” and select “Options” and under the “Send” tab, check if the Mail Sending Format is set to HTML.
Now open a New Message window by clicking on the “Create Mail” icon. Just above the area where you enter your email message, there is a row with a lot many icons. These present many different formatting styles quite similar to any text editor – font selection, font size, font color, bold, underline and italic options, a horizontal rule, a hyperlink addition button, image inclusion etc.
Also go to the “View” menu and select “Source Edit”. You shall now have three tabs at the bottom – Edit, Source and Preview.
It’s time to tart creating your signature. For example, if you want to include an image (typically, your company logo), click on the Insert Picture button and select the image. For those who know a little HTML, you can always fine tune the email signature by altering the code. Click on the source tab at the bottom to have the HTML code displayed.
Here is a snapshot of a simple but elegant signature I created in less than a minute.
Saving the email signature
Once you are finished with creating the fancy email signature, you need to save this file in HTML format. This is slightly tricky – or I should say, not that straightforward. Though Windows Mail has the option to save it as an HTML file, I have noticed that it doesn’t work esp. if it contains images.
Click on the “Source” tab at the bottom which displays the HTML code.
Select all of this (click somewhere on the code and hit Control-A) and open a new Notepad document. Copy the HTML code into Notepad (CONTROL-V). Now save this file to a directory of choice with a .html or .htm extension – make sure you select “All files” in the “Save as type” drop down.
Using the fancy email signature in Windows Mail
To use this signature you need to add it to Windows Mail. Go to “Tools” -> “Options” and then click on the Signatures tab. Hit the “New” button and select “File”
Browse to the location where you had saved the HTML file. You can also give a descriptive name to the signature (click on the Rename button). IMPORTANT: Under the Signature Settings section, make sure the “Add signatures to all outgoing messages” is checked. (If you want to append the signature to all outgoing emails, uncheck the option below). Click on the “Apply” button followed by the “OK” button.
Now whenever you create an email message in Windows Mail, your fancy signature will be added.
I also recommend reading the creating email signatures in Windows Mail to learn more about including signatures to all outgoing emails, having different signatures for different accounts and what all you can put in an email signature.