Fun Times With Apple Mail Signatures
Recently, it came time to update our email signatures company-wide for the new year. I thought this sounded like a fun job to do, so I hopped right on the saddle before I knew what I was getting myself into. What I found is that amidst all of the things Apple does well, their signature utility in Apple Mail is a big pain in my butt!
Through various attempts to create a signature using rich text instead of plain text, I finally had to simply give up on the endeavor and try to use HTML. Long story short, there are inconsistent layout and copy/paste issues with links and fonts, and it’s less than ideal when your goal is for consistency among employees across the company.
The HTML process went so much smoother, and I was able to recreate a signature exactly how I wanted it. The problem with HTML signatures, however, is that they are not supported by all mail clients. Since we cater to a very diverse customer base, we need to make our things work for the lowest common denominator, so to speak. Therefore, it was back to rich text for me.
Thankfully, all of my prior work wasn’t all for naught! If you’re someone who wants a sophisticated signature for personal (or business) use on either one or just a few computers, HTML is a nice option. You can easily get what you want out of a signature in Apple Mail by using a combination of HTML and rich text. (Note that the following instructions use only text and no images, though images could be added to HTML if desired.)
- The first thing you have to do is create the signature you want in HTML. (I use Sublime Text 2 for my coding.)
- Once it is created, open it up in a web browser like Safari.
- From there, simply select the entire contents of that page using the shortcut “command+a” and copy it all using “command+c”.
- With that in your clipboard, open Mail go to Mail > Preferences > Signatures.
- Add a new signature by hitting the “+” symbol and paste what you copied earlier into the window on the right.
All of your formatting should be preserved and everything will now be in rich text rather than HTML. You now have the signature you always wanted without the headache of fooling around with Apple’s signature utility in the Mail app!