Understanding Autosignatures in Outlook

We’ve had a few people complain that Outlook’s signature switching feature broken so I figured it was time for a refresher course on how it works.

"I created an email signature and want it to show up automatically.  I followed the instructions, and it still will not show up on the email. I have shut down and re-opened Outlook and still nothing."

If you are using Outlook 2003 with Word as your editor or Outlook 2007 and newer and have multiple accounts, you can assign a signature to each account and Outlook will change signatures when you select another account, provided you have a signature assigned to the default account.

However – and this is important – while you don't need a signature assigned to every account, you must assign a signature to the default account and should assign signatures to each secondary account. If a signature is not assigned to an account, the autosignature feature stops working, even if you switch back to an account with a signature assigned.

The capability to swap signatures is removed from the message when an account without a signature is selected. A signature won’t be added if you switch to an account that has a signature assigned.

So… always assign a signature to all of your email accounts. If you don’t want a signature on an account, create a blank signature that contains just two dashes ( — ) so you can see where the signature begins.

Name the signature "Blank" and assign it to any account that doesn't have a signature.

Published May 3, 2005. Last updated on February 27, 2014.