A Quick Way to manage Outlook email signatures

chris.ayers · Just popping in Joined: 14 Aug 2009 Posts: 4 Location: UK

Hi,

I notice that your product allows me to set the signatures for To: and Reply: on each PC I deploy to, however in my environment I only define the corporate signature used for new mails. The reply / forward signature is left for users to edit.

What is the best way of allowing this flexibility for users whilst protecting the corporate signature. If I set the signature for new mails as the corporate one and set replies as NONE, each time the user sets up their reply setting it gets overridden by SIGN.EXE, but equally as I don't know what the name of each users' personal signature is I cannot predefine it (if I did then the contents of a blank reply would overwrite the user define contents anyway).

What I need is the ability to tell SIGN.EXE to leave the user's setting of New or Reply as it is, rather then setting to a particular signature, or NONE - Is this possible?

Chris A.

Jesper Frier · Posted: Mon Aug 17, 2009 10:12 am Post subject:

One way to achieve this is...

Set the corporate default signature and NONE as reply/forward.
When all users have run Sign.exe ones, then switch to 'Silent mode' in Outlook General Settings.
Users can then set they own reply/forward and it will not be overwritten as long as Sign.exe runs in 'Silent mode'.

The downside is that any changes to the default corporate signature will also not be overwritten. And setting up new users will not be done automatically.

You could consider introducing corporate reply/forward signatures. They do not have to be the same for everyone as you can define different designs to groups or individuals. But at least you control the corporate design for everyone - in HTML, RTF and TXT. When users are in charge, they forget to design their RTF and TXT formats which Outlook uses by design when replying emails in those formats.

The best way?
Please explain why you do not want to control the corporate reply/forward signature design? Is it considered less important for your corporate identity?
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chris.ayers · Just popping in Joined: 14 Aug 2009 Posts: 4 Location: UK

Jesper,

Thanks for the reply - I had a feeling that you would suggest 'slient mode' - unfortunately this will not satisfy marketing (the source of all decisions regarding signatures) as they want to use the signature for campaigns and advertising, so not having the main signature content update automatically would not do for them.

Why is the reply signature not managed - you would need to ask marketing, but my guess is that exactly what you suggest - reply forward is not felt part of the corporate identity, as it is used once a communication has started, so the overhead of a full signature (and adverts) is not felt useful (and may be actually counterproductive) as it inserts itself possibly many times into the mail chains between supplier and customer.

So returning to my original request - can you add to the next release requests list a request for the ability to set and lock main signatures choice, but to set the choice of reply signature to 'Leave as Set by User'

Thanks

Jesper Frier

Hi Chris,

Jesper Frier

Hi Chris,

Try this and users reply/forward signature is unchanged:

In reply/forward manually write 'LEAVE', then save and run Sign.exe.

Question

Does it work for you?
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</Jesper> | Idea

Email signature Health Check >>> My test results

chris.ayers · Just popping in Joined: 14 Aug 2009 Posts: 4 Location: UK

Jesper,

I've passed this onto my deployment guys - they will give it a go soon....

Many thanks,

Great Support!

chris.ayers · Just popping in Joined: 14 Aug 2009 Posts: 4 Location: UK

Jesper,

I can confirm that LEAVE does the job exactly as required - Thanks Great

asamuel · Posted: Thu Oct 15, 2009 3:35 pm Post subject:

I am running version 5.5.0, and when I type in LEAVE in the reply and forward field in Set Signatures for All, I get a message telling me that 'LEAVE' is not on the list.

What did I miss?

We only need to have signature defaulted for new messages, and let the end user decide if to use it for replies/forwards.
Thanks.