Don’t Settle for Plain Text Signature in Outlook

A typical Outlook email signature is plain text, which looks quite bland. But you can make your email more personalized and memorable by adding a company logo or photo to your email signature and links to your social media profiles.

How: Because Outlook doesn’t provide an easy way to wrap your photo with text, you’ll need to do most of the work in Word. Follow these steps to format your photo in Word:

1. Open a new document and insert your photo.
2. Right-click on the photo and choose Wrap Text | Square from the shortcut menu.
3. Resize the photo as needed by clicking and dragging on a corner.
4. Place the insertion point to the right of your photo and type the text for your email signature.
5. Adjust the size of your photo so that it spans all of the lines of text. Press [Enter] several times so the insertion point isn’t near your signature text.
6. Press [Alt][PrtScn] to copy your screen, then open Microsoft Paint or a similar image editing program.
7. Press [Ctrl]-V to paste your screen into the image editing software, and crop the page close to your picture and text. Save the file as an image, and close it.

To insert the photo in Outlook, follow these steps:

1. Open a new email message.
2. Select the Message tab on the main ribbon, and in the Include group, click on Signature, then choose Signatures from the dropdown list. In the resulting Signatures and Stationery dialog box, click on New.
3. In the New Signature dialog box, enter a name in the Type a Name for This Signature text box, then click OK.

Tip: You may prefer to name it something like “Photo” so you know at a glance what it contains. Click on the Insert Picture button, then in the resulting Insert Picture dialog box, navigate to the photo signature file you just created and click Insert.

4. Resize the image as desired, then click OK.

Linking Your Social Media Profiles

Ensure that all your email contacts know how to stay in touch with you on social media by including links to all of your profiles in an email signature. Follow these steps to add graphics link to your social media profiles:

1. First, search the Internet for a logo by typing something similar to “Facebook logo download.” Follow the search result that takes you to the company’s brand resources where you’ll find an official logo.
2. Right-click on the logo and select Save Image As from the resulting shortcut menu. Save it to your hard drive.
3. Next, open Outlook and create a new email message.
4. On the Message tab, in the Include group, click on Signature | Signatures. Click the Photo Signature and click OK.
5. Click the Insert Picture button and navigate to the logo you’d like to add. Click Insert. Right-click the logo, choose Picture from the shortcut menu, and click on the Size tab. Size your Height and Width about 0.3”. With the logo still selected, click the Hyperlink button and add a hyperlink to your account.
6. Click OK to save the changes.

To use your email signature, open the message you wish to send and select the Message tab. In the Include group, click on Signature and select your Photo signature.

More Resources on Outlook and the MS Suite

Want to learn more about how to use Outlook and the rest of the Microsoft Suite more efficiently? Check out Dartnell’s Outlook on Steroids, a manual developed by the staff of Inside Microsoft Office that will take you through Outlook’s advanced features step by step so that you can put them into practice right away. Or up your game by getting the entire “Microsoft Office Essentials” bundle, which includes the Outlook book and several others!