Set up your email signature

A signature saves you typing your details at the bottom of every message, and it
tells the person reading it who you are and how to reach you. Set it once and it
follows you.

This takes about two minutes.

What a good signature looks like

Four short lines, typed as plain text:

Your Name
Your Role
Your Company
Your phone · yourcompany.com

That is the whole thing. No logo, no photo, no quote, no social icons.

That can feel plain if you have seen colourful signatures elsewhere, so it is
worth knowing why we recommend it:

• Images usually get blocked. Most email programs hide pictures from outside
  senders until the reader clicks to allow them. A signature built out of a logo
  is simply invisible to a lot of the people you send to.
• Plain text never breaks. It arrives looking the way you sent it on every
  phone, every email program, and after any number of replies. Decorated
  signatures are the first thing to fall apart.
• Long threads stay readable. After a few messages back and forth, big
  signatures stack up and bury the actual conversation.

Setting it up

You can do this in the web version or in the Outlook app on your computer. Both
save to the same account, so you only need to do it once and it appears in the
other.

In the web version

1. Go to outlook.office.com and sign in with your work email address.
2. Click the gear icon at the top right, then Mail, then
   Compose and reply.
3. Type your signature in the box using the format above.
4. Underneath, choose your signature for new messages.
5. Click Save, then send one message to yourself to see how it arrives.

In the Outlook app on your computer

In classic Outlook: File → Options → Mail → Signatures.

In the newer Outlook: Settings → Accounts → Signatures.

Same four lines either way.

Type it, do not paste it

Pasting from Word, a web page or an old email brings hidden formatting with it.
That is how a signature ends up in the wrong font, a different size, or with a
stray background colour that only shows up on somebody else's screen. Typing it
takes twenty seconds longer and always matches.

Your phone is separate

This is the one everybody misses.

The Outlook app on a phone keeps its own signature, and out of the box it says
something like "Get Outlook for iOS". It will not pick up the signature you
just made on your computer.

In the phone app, open the menu, then Settings, then Signature, and type
the same lines. Worth doing straight away, because for a lot of people most of
their email goes out from their phone.

What about replies?

Your full signature belongs on new messages. On replies, either turn it off or
use a shorter version with just your name and phone number. Nobody needs your
full details repeated eight times down a single thread.

You can set a different signature for replies on the same screen where you set
the first one.

If something looks wrong

The signature is not appearing on new messages. Go back to the same settings
screen and check the dropdown underneath the signature box. Creating a signature
and choosing when to use it are two separate steps, and it is easy to do the
first and miss the second.

It looks fine to you but wrong to other people. Almost always pasted
formatting. Delete it, type it fresh, and save.

It is missing on a new computer. Give it a few minutes after signing in for
the first time. If it still has not arrived, set it once in the web version and
it will come across.

It is missing on your phone. Expected. See the phone section above; phones
keep their own.

If it still will not behave, send us one of the messages that came out wrong and
we will take a look at it.