Signatures with Company Logo (Outlook 2000)

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I was asked by our partners if we could create an Outlook signature that would include our company logo. Basically what they want to do is hit the create new mail message button and have their name and the company logo at the bottom.

I can create stationery with the logo as the background but that is not what they want.

Any help would be greatly appreciated

Hetty

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Go to Tools|Options|Mail Format. Once there, select the Signature Picker. If you already have a standard signature, click on Edit. (If not, select New.) From there, select Advanced Edit. You will end up in Word, and you can then use that to insert a graphic.

Hope that helps.

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I followed your instructions and when I clicked on advanced, note pad opened, so I changed the mail format from HTML to Outlook Rich text and repeated the instructions. It worked perfectly. Thank you but…when the recipient openes the message, they are able to manipulate the inserted graphic. I have already yelled at a colleague who used his scanned signature in his messages, I grabbed it and created his Will and Testament naming me as beneficiary .

Any other suggestions?

Hetty

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If he is wealthy, name me as a beneficiary as well!

As to the graphic in the signature, that was my only thought. You might retry using HTML, and include a heavy dose of JavaScript to disable the right mouse button so they cannot, easily, grab the graphic.

Sorry I can’t be of more assistance.

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I think most users have by now put Outlook in the restricted zone and turned off Active Scripting in that zone. It would be dangerous to assume otherwise.

Nonetheless, I think HTML is a far better choice than RTF!

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You can’t always turn off the right click. For browsing I use a proxy program, Proxomitron, that filters html code and, among other things, removes any right click blocks the page might have had in place. Otherwise, Outlook security settings block the scripts.

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Is using Rich Text a good idea? If you are sending messages to non-Outlook users they may have problems receiving your email. We had a user switch to RTF so she could add a fancy script-style signature. After making this change, any attachments she included in the message were being dropped when sent to someone using Outlook Express. We changed her to HTML format and the problem went away.

If when you go into “Advanced Edit” from the signature editor and Notepad opens, you should go into Internet Options and set the default HTML editor to Word. That will make creating a graphic signature much easier. When done you can reset your default editor to your preferred program.

I’ve seen scanned signatures used before in government offices, where the administrative assistants would compose letters in Word and then insert the required official’s signature. Perhaps this was considered a convenience, saving stamp ink and avoiding repetitive motion injuries… but I have to agree that it is too great a risk to have genuine signature facsimiles floating around the internet. I hope your mock Will was enough to grab his attention and get him to change. Selecting a script-style font for a signature can accomplish the same general purpose without creating this unnecessary risk. (Can we get a {caution} and/or {stopsign} smiley created to highlight such risky behaviour?)

As to signatures being an “attachment” (not your reply, but it was mentioned), they themselves are never an attachment, but if you link a v-card to your signature you will be adding an attachment to every message.

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I maybe getting a bit confused. Is this logo going to appear on every message or a select few? I know that if you set up a logo or signature in Outlook using HTML format, and send it to someone who reads mail in plain text format, the logo, signature, and all non-text parts of the messages are included as attachments. At my firm, we are currently switching from Groupwise to Outlook, and if I send a message with my company logo inserted into my signature to one of the Groupwise accounts, it comes across as an attachment. I also know that other law firms in town have virus scanning software that blocks any message with even a jpeg from being delivered.
So when we considered setting up a standard email including our logo as a header, and to do this we had to use the custom stationary feature of Outlook. We were told by consultants that this would be a bad idea because it was possible that some recipients may never receive the message. As I understand it, using the stationary feature of Outlook was what was going to cause the problem for us. Apparently when you send a message using stationary, some sort of file is included as an embedded attachment in the message. Perhaps this is the difference between what we were told, and what y’all are talking about.
If this is something that is only being used for a select few messages (as I suspect a signature would be), then I doubt that there is a problem with it. However, in our case we were looking at using this across the board for all messages, and that was why we choose not to do it.
Sorry if I got confused.

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So true, I hadn’t considered plain text only recipients. Also, I use a mail filtering program, MailWasher, to preview my messages while still on their servers, and this program will report some messages as having attachments but when Outlook receives them there is no attachment – only an enhanced message. And of course, my usual rule is that unexpected attachments are almost always summarily deleted.

I also have had some “odd” experiences with sending logo’d stationery. I had incorporated our company mascot – Happy the Clown – into the stationery. Some time later I was talking with our Exec VP and he related a discussion he had with someone I had sent email to who was wondering what to do with the “Happy.jpg” attachment. Since then I’ve trimmed down my signature to something more manageable – no ‘attached’ graphic image and a smaller message size to begin with, while still adding some extra flair to the message.

You could always set up a logo-enhanced signature but not have it set to be used for every message but instead manually insert it when desired. Unfortunately, I don’t believe that in any case the graphic portion of the signature will be printed.

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Thank you for your advice, creating a signature with a graphic was easier. But it doesn’t solve my problem…if it the message was sent as HTML the logo disappeared. If it was sent as Rich Text, it was there but could then be manipulated. For me personally I would be quite happy for the company logo to be sent to Valley of the Geeks for the Banner Ad treatment, as for the rest of the firm, they would have a bad case of humour failure. Is the general consensus,” you can’t always get what you want?” or am I being dim

But thank you to everyone who has sent comments, it was very much appreciated.

Hetty

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I think this is a nice idea, and we considered doing this as well. However, we decided not to because many companies have virus software that will block messages with attachments. While not all companies will block messages with the attachment type that your logo is in, some will. We were afraid that people might have problems with recipients being able to access email messages.

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Hetty this idea may just solve your problem. if you use word as your email editor, create whatever text and graphic you wish within word get the size and words correct. then block on the entire logo. then click on “Auto correct” within word. give it a shortcut and click add, and ok! then use as necessary. you can make up headers this way or anything else you desire. when you wish to insert the logo into the letter position the cursor and type the shortcut and space bar and hey presto the logo appears!

hope this helps
Robert

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