Understanding Mac Mail Signatures

Setting up email signatures in Mac Mail can be confusing as signatures you create may not seem to be available after you create them. Learn how to create and manage your signatures, set default signatures, and choose alternatives.

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Video Transcript: Hi, this is Gary with MacMost.com. Today let's take a look at setting up and using email signatures. 
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So when you go to send a new email message in the Mac Mail App usually a signature is included at the bottom right when you start composing a message. This can have your name, your email address, a website, all sorts of things. But it could be a bit confusing as to how to setup email signatures. Sometimes they don't appear and sometimes when you create a new email signature you can't seem to select it to use it in a new message. 
In the Mail App when you go to compose a new message, probably by default, you'll see an email signature that appears at the bottom. It'll just be there automatically. But you can change which email signature is there by using this little popup menu here. If you select it you can select None and it will remove the signature. You can select from a list of signatures although you may only see one if you haven't setup anymore. You can choose Edit Signatures. Instead of using this let's go directly there by going to Mail, Preferences, and then selecting Signatures at the top. This is where you control the signatures in the Mail App. Using this can be confusing because it works in a different way than just about  anything else in macOS. 
You'll see three columns here. Only the left you'll see a column that includes All Signatures at the top and then under that each email account that you've setup. Maybe you only have one email account. Many people have several added to Mac Mail. So you'll see them all listed here. Then you'll see a list of signatures here in the middle. Then you could select the signature and see it here on the right and also edit it. Now what's confusing is if you add a new signature, so let's use the Plus button here and add another signature. It will give it a name like this. But let's name it something proper. Let's say this is something we want to use in business communication so we'll call it Business. Then let's set it up here like we want. So maybe I'm going to use my name and a full URL here that people can use to visit my site and then maybe before it I'm going to place a bunch of dashes so it kind of creates a divider line. So this is my new business signature. 
So it seems like you're done and you should be able to use this. Let's go a create a new message here. We'll see it's using the old one. Okay. So the default is set to Signature #1, not Business. But that's fine. I could change it right here except when I select this I don't see my Business signature listed anywhere. So what's going on here? Why can't I select it? Well, if I return to Preferences here I'll see the accounts. I notice they each say they have one signature. All Signatures says 2 and it lists both of them. But if I go to one of these it only shows Signature #1. Each one of them just shows that. That's because the way this whole signature interface works. If you want to use a signature with an email account you have to add it to that email account. Now you don't need to recreate it. All you need to do is go back to All Signatures and drag and drop this to anyone of these. Notice now it says two signatures here for this. I can select it and there it is. But it's not listed for these other ones. So if I want to add it for all of these accounts, so I can use the signature whenever I'm sending an email from any account, I could easily drag and drop it like that. So now it's listed for every single one of these accounts. I can change the order in which it appears here in the account if I want. Also, down here set the default for it. So for sending an email from this account the default signature is #1. But I can change that to Business so that's the default. 
Now let's try sending an email. You could see it's choosing my new Business email signature. Over here it even says it is. But I can always go back and choose Signature #1. Both of those are listed under that account so they are both going to be available right here. Now remember I only set it as a default for this account. So if I change where this email is coming from to another account it will choose the default for that account. But I added Business to every single account. So it's always going to be available here in this list. 
So the idea here is that All Signatures will show you a list of every signature that you've created. But each account will only show the signatures that are available to that account. So I can create another one, and let's call this one Personal. This is just for sending emails to friends. All I'm going to do here is just a long dash and then my first name. That's all I want for personal email. I'm going to add this only to my iCloud Account here. So it's not going to be on my iMac Account or Goggle Account. So you can see this one says three signatures and Personal is included but these do not have Personal included at all. But I'm still going to leave Signature #1 as my default for iCloud. So let's create a new message here. I'm going to switch to sending it from my iCloud Account and you could see it chooses the Signature #1 as the default. But I have Personal available. Personal wouldn't be available if I was using another account here because it's not in the list for that account. 
So you could basically create a new signature will All Signatures selected and then use Drag and Drop to spread it to these other accounts. You could even go into one of these other accounts and drag and drop from there. So I could drag Personal from this account to this account to add it if I want. In addition I could also create a new signature while I have an account selected. So I'll create a new one here and call this Promo if I want to promote something and set it up as something else. Then it's available here. It will also be available in All Signatures, you see it says four signatures now, but it's not available in these two accounts unless I'm going to drag and drop it to those accounts. If there's something I want to remove from an account I could go into the account, I can select the signature there, hit Minus, and it will do so without even prompting for confirmation. Because it's only removing it from this account. It's still available here and would still be available in other accounts where I've added that signature. It's only in All Signatures, if I go to select something  and then remove it, well then I'll be prompted to confirm because that will be removing the signature entirely. It would come out of All Signatures and not be available anymore in any of these accounts. The signature would be gone. 
If you want to Rename a signature you can select it and just click on it again and now you're in Rename Mode. Just like renaming a file. So I can Rename this one Basic and you'll see that new name is used in the Accounts as well. I can also select the signature anywhere I am, like here I'm under my Goggle Account, I selected Business and I could change this and then I'll see that reflected anywhere the Business signature is used. So I'll go here. Select Business and you could see the changes are applied. There's only one Business signature. It's just being used by multiple accounts. 
Another option you've got is down here under the Defaults. Instead of setting a specific default you can, of course, choose None. Or you could choose At Random or in Sequential Order. This is useful if you have a bunch of signatures say that have a quote or maybe that promote a different aspect of your business then you could have those signatures listed here for this one account. You set it to At Random or In Sequential Order and every time you send a new email message from that account it's going to pick a different one from the list. 
Now as for editing your signatures when you select one and go over here to Edit you can use just about anything you would normally use for editing Rich Text. So think about how you would edit text in TextEdit. For instance I can select some text and do Command B for bold. I can also go to the Format Menu which is unusual because  typically when you go to a Preferences window like this in an app you can't really do much with the Menu items up here. But in this case you can. You can use Format. You can do Show Fonts. You can bring up all the fonts, change the font, the font size, the style. You could go and choose Colors and change the colors here. You could do things like Bullet Lists and Choose from all the different style functions. You can choose Alignment. So I could center that and all of that. As long as you're sending a Rich Text email all of that will work. 
Of course if you're sending Plain Text email then that is just going to be converted to plain text as will anything else you do in the message. You can also Copy and Paste text from apps like Pages and TextEdit into here and the styling will be retained. You could even Copy and Paste images in here and include an image in your signature. Although I strongly advise against that. When you put an image with your signature you're attaching a large file to every email message that uses that signature. So imagine emailing friends and every single message you send is going to include this attachment. For one thing it's going to use up their mobile band width when they read their email on their iPhones. Also it's going to take up all that extra storage space. If you send a friend a hundred messages over the course of a year that's a hundred copies of that image that is now permanently stored inside of their email database. So I always advise that it's a best practice to keep your email signature short and to the point. Maybe include your name and your company name if it's business. Maybe include a link somewhere. There's really no need to ever include your email address because you just sent somebody an email. They can just reply or look at who the email is from. 
So when creating email signatures I believe it's important to be very conservative and make them as short and simple as possible. Remember when composing a message that you can always choose from any that are linked to that account. So think about that when you send an email. Think about what email signature there is at the bottom and does it fit the message. So one minute you maybe emailing a client or a co-worker with a business message and the next minute you maybe emailing a friend with a personal message. Rarely does the same signature apply in both cases. So go and choose your signature carefully. Don't just use the default for everything. Also keep in mind that this signature just pastes text at the bottom of the message. You can customize it after the fact. So I can change the signature here to Business but then I could further customize with something else. Like maybe adding a phone number if I think it's important in this particular situation but I don't necessarily need to add that as a regular email signature that's available in the list. The recipient isn't going to know the difference between this being something that's an email signature in the app and something that you've just typed out. 
That's how to use email signatures in the Mac Mail App. Hope you found this useful. Thanks for watching.

Comments: 11 Responses to “Understanding Mac Mail Signatures”

Bob McLeod

3 years ago

This Mail signatures session was so very helpful, well, as I am finding all your mini tutorials to be.

Many thanks indeed. (Now, to go and check out your proper courses.)

Bob

Jon Paris

Any hints on how to trouble-shoot when signatures don't work Gary?

On all but one of my accounts the signature works just fine. But even though my main account has a signature (actually there are now two) when I use that account for email no signature shows up.

Having gone through this video I thought perhaps the selector might be my salvation but when I tried to use it "None" was the only option.

Any ideas?

Gary Rosenzweig

Jon: Watch the video carefully. Make sure you have assigned the signatures you want to the accounts you want.

jon paris

Yup - followed all steps. Even removed the old signature and created a new version. Guess I'll call Apple Support and see what they have to say.

Bill Neff

I really enjoyed this detailed explanation on signatures. I’ve had trouble with signatures in the past and NEVER thought about DRAGGING the signature to each email address! What a revelation!

Stan Scardino

Very helpful. As a returning MAC user (last used on laptop in mid-90’s) I am often looking for something like this lesson on Signatures…like someone else, I had created signatures but could not get them to display…now they do!
Brilliant!

Lawrence R Simas Sr

2 years ago

Like so many others I too had problems with the adding of signatures :-( Not anymore !! Thanks Mr. Gary!! Love your videos ;-)

Larry Isaacs

Have set up different signatures and assigned each to their prospective email account. When starting a new email, the default signature does show up as expected on each account. However, I do not get that dropdown menu on the email to allow me to change the signature for that email account even though I do have more than one signature in the account. How do I get that dropdown menu to appear?

Larry: Just go back into Mail, Settings and double-check everything to make sure you have more than one signature assigned to that account.

Hi Gary: As you suggested I did go in the make sure I had more than one signature in my email accounts. I had 3 signatures in my iCloud mail account, 3 signatures in my Exchange email account and one in my gmail account. I do get a drop down menu on the "From" line that will allow me to change the account from which I am mailing from, however, the rest of that line is blank, therefore no drop down menu that would allow me to change the signature for that given account.

Larry: Not sure why you aren't seeing there, sorry.

Comments Closed.

Understanding Mac Mail Signatures

Comments: 11 Responses to “Understanding Mac Mail Signatures”

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