How do you use signatures in Outlook?
Professionals: Use a variety of signatures to save time
Professionals: Use signatures to advertise their website
Amateurs: Ignore signatures
Email Signatures in Outlook
Outlook has a facility to automatically add your signature to every email.
This works rather like having a footer in a Word document. Creating
signatures is a classic for investing a few minutes, which then repays tenfold
when you are in a hurry and want to dash off an email. With
a little more effort you can extend the signature to reflect your personality
and your mood.
This is what a basic signature looks like:
Regards Guy
There are a number of tactics with the Signature, in addition to just
displaying your closing statement you can display one of these options:
1) Your electronic vCard.
2) A saying such as:
Everyone I meet
is my superior in some way.
Ralph Waldo
Emerson
3) Your Website
Guy's website
www.computerperformance.co.uk
4) You can even have a different signature for when you reply to email.
5) If you must, you can have a disclaimer at the end of each mail.
Personally, I do not like them and sometimes it looks silly having a short
message with a 12 line disclaimer.
6) Perhaps the best tactic is to have multiple signatures. Then all you need to
do is right click and alter the
signature area in the email and match the closure to the mood of your text. For instance if you are emailing your beloved you could change
Regards Guy to, 'All my Love Guy xxx' just by right clicking anywhere in the regular
signature.
Where in Outlook do you create the signatures?
The precise location of Signature menu in Outlook varies from version; if you
are stuck try Outlook's built-in help. In most versions of Outlook, go to
the Tools (Menu), Options, Mail Format (Tab).
Digital Signatures
It is also possible to use a digital signature. For this to work you
need to
request a certificate from your IT department or from one of the internet
digital security providers. You really only need a digital signature to
prove that it is you sending the email and not a malicious impostor pretending to be you.
Encrypting the email text is separate issue, Digital Signatures are about
proving you are who you say you are, where as digital encryption is about
preventing your email from being intercepted and read.
My personal view is that most people do not need digital signatures.
You have to consider the hassle of getting and installing the certificates with
their usefulness. However, if you have a very important job and people are
pretending to send email from you, then a digital signature would give you and
your recipients peace of mind.
To find the Digital Signature setting, try Tools, Options, Security
(Tab). If you cannot find Digital Signatures at that location ask
Outlook's help.
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