Problem
Why do i need this article? Can you not just create an email signature in outlook and add images in its own editor? Yes and No!
You can create signatures with images using outlooks signature editor but it does not always work correctly. The image might appear to be embeded but when the recipient receives the email, the image in the signature is not present.
The recipients email client can also have a bearing on whether it appears correctely at the other end, also the editor you are using in outlook to edit emails might also have an effect, as you know you can edit emails in outlook's Basic Editor or you can use Word which forces emails to be in Rich Text Format (RTF)
If your email signature is working correctely you do not need to do anything, this is for the occassions when it does not, most likely this is just with older version of outlook. I know outlook 2003 has this issue sometimes.
Solution
My solution is to create a manually crafted email in HTML and then install this into outlook. The images in the signature have had their locations manually specified. Using this method forces outlook to properly embed images in the signature. You can edit the signature in outlook but you can never edit the image in outlook because it mangles the code and then the image becomes attached rather than embedded, you will always have to edit the image code manually in the .htm file.
The Code
This is my sample email signature that can be aeasily modified for your needs via the .htm or in outlook itself (not the image though)
<!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.01 Transitional//EN" "http://www.w3c.org/TR/1999/REC-html401-19991224/loose.dtd">
<html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml">
<head>
<title>Dynamic Email Signature</title>
<meta http-equiv=Content-Type content="text/html; charset=windows-1252">
<meta content="MSHTML 6.00.6000.16705" name=GENERATOR>
<style type="text/css">
.signature-style {
font-family: Geneva, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;
font-size: 11px;
}
</style>
</head>
<body>
<div class="signature-style">
<p>
<strong>Joe Bloggs<br>
<strong>Marketing Assistant</strong></strong><br>
<strong>Tel:</strong> 01772 1234569<br>
Twitter: <a href="http://twitter.com/twitter">My Twitter Feed</a><br>
Facebook: <a href="http://www.facebook.com/facebook">My Facebook Page</a><br>
<br>
QuantumWarp<br>
Rocky Lane<br>
Manchester <br>
MA1 1QW<br>
<br>
<strong>Box Office:</strong> 01772 123456<br>
<a href="http://quantumwarp.com/" title="QuantumWarp">QuantumWarp.com</a>
</p>
<p>
<a href="http://quantumwarp.com/"><img src="/./dynamic_files/emailsignature.jpg"></a><br>
</p>
<p><em>QuantumWarp, Rocky Lane, Manchester, Lancashire MA1 1QW Company Registered No: 1234567 (England)</em></p>
</div>
</body>
</html>
NB:
- you can view the signature by opening the dynamic.htm in a web browser
- /./dynamic_files should not have the extra / in it, there is a fault with the way the code is stored in the database. should be ./dynamic_files
The Image
Create a folder called dynamic_files and add the image you want to use in to it.
Install the Signature and Image into Outlook
This method will show you how to create an email signature from scratch. If you already have a corporate email it should be fairly easy for you to modify my example signature into your corporate colours and details etc..
NB: You will be required to visit everyones machine to create their dynamic email signature once.
- if you have no signatures at all, you need to create a dummy/blank signature in outlook. This creates the folders where signatures are stored.
- Place your modified signature dynamic.htm and the image folder dynamic_files in the following folder.
Win7 - C:\Users\{user}\AppData\Roaming\Microsoft\Signatures - Open Outlook
- Edit the signature if required. i.e. Alter users name and phone numbers. (do not alter or edit the image in outlook)
Other Resource Identifiers
You can use several different ways to reference images in your email signature
- src="\\server\Shared Files\Marketing\emailsignature.jpg"
- src="file://///server/Shared Files/Marketing/emailsignature.jpg"
There might be more that I have not added.
Outlook 2007/2010/2013 and Newer
To be embed images in these version of outlook requires a registry change. By default outlook disables the embedding of images because there is a thought that you should be using cloud resources and links.
Conclusion
This method is quite robust and once set should keep working and your signatures will always correctly show the image in your outlook and in the recipients client.
Notes
- Updating the Signature Image location - as mentioned earlier you will need to edit the location manually in the dynamic.htm file in the signatures folder, but when you have done this you should delete the related signature files i.e. dynamic.txt and dynamic.rtf, outlook will recreate these from the updated .htm file when required.
- You can add multiple images using this method