My good friend and designer, James LaCroix, showed me awhile back how to make an html email signature for Apple’s Mail program (something it doesn’t do easily). Since I set up that signature I have had a few folks inquire how I made it, so I thought I show the steps here. NOTE: These directions work with Apple’s Tiger and Leopard.
Step One: HTML, AVATARS and YOUR INFO
Create your signature in html format. You can use something like Apple’s Textedit, my favorite Textmate, or something more visually based like Dream Weaver.
You will need to upload your avatar to your server, or host it on something like a box.net account (you’ll have to make sure it’s public if you use this). My avatar is set to 42×42.
You can download a basic template here.
Step Two: FAKE SIGNATURE
Next, you want to navigate to Mail’s preferences (or hit the shortcut ,). Click the signature tab at the top. Here you want to create a new signature, and give it a fancy name since it will be for your new fancy signature. I have called mine FAKE for purposes of the tutorial. This will serve as a place-holder for your new HTML signature. Now drag title of your signature to whatever email account you want to be able to use it with (or drag it to all).
Step Three: WEBARCHIVE
Next, open your HTML file in safari, and click “save as” in the menubar. Next, go to your home folder—>Library—>Mail—>Signatures. In there you will see the signature you created in Mail’s preferences (you can see what the most recent signature is using quick-look in Leopard, or look at the “date modified”). The title of the FAKE signature you created will look something like “8D2D5125-757A-482F-A291-EFDFEE476000.” Copy that title, and make that the title of the Webarchive file you just created. You do this so when you drop that webarchive file into signatures folder it will overwrite the FAKE signature. Once you move your webarchive Signature to the signature folder, and click replace and you should be good. Restart Mail.
Now, when you go to write an email make sure you have your new signature selected from the panel in your message window and everything should look slick. Let me know if you have any questions or suggestions.
UPDATE:
A reader has sent in this tip and think it may solve some of the problems people are having. Let me know if it works for you:
“There must be written text before and after the HTML entry!” … i don’t know why this works, but i’ve spend a long time trying out all kinds of methods, and then came across this side (http://www.macosxhints.com/article.php?story=20070407214643680) and implemented only the part where this is mentioned … worked great! I believe, that those who did get it to work might have had text before and after, but may not have realized that it this is why it worked..
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Everything works for me, except for the picture part. Numerous friends have been commenting on this, suggesting that I put a .jpg in my signature instead of .tiff which they can't read being non-Mac-users.
However, whenever I try to paste pictures in differently, somehow, Mail automatically converts every .jpg automatically back into .tiff format again. Why on earth is that?!
When following the whole procedure as described, I get the fancy signature style apart from the picture: still blue blocks with question marks. What to do?
Thank you so much ! Don't forget to save under the webarchive format in Safari
The pictures won't display in my signature… I've tried .gif and .jpg neither of them work.
this works for me, with the small nit that my newly created signature appears at the top of the email message, and if i start to type a message, the signature is on top of my message
Thank You for an amazing post. I don't usually comment on items on the interwebz but I found this post to be completely relevant and helpful for Creatives that are out and about. Heads up!
Strangley enough, I'm having the same problem now (with the question mark). I'm not sure why.
Hi there!
I did it!
Do everything you did. Open the page in Safari, highlight all and copy. Finally paste into you current (no image) signature in Mail. And voila!!!
Hope this helps you too!
Hi there everything work, except my logo…doesn't not show up only a square with a question mark.
i did my html in dreamweaver…please advice any help would be greatly appreciated!
Thanks
Hello,
For some reason I can not get this to work.. I have tried it numerous times. I have viewed it in a couple of html viewers and it works fine there. Could it be that the latest version of mail does not support html?
Any pointers would be much appreciated
Thanks
J
Thanks, this worked great for me to use a gif animated image in my signature.
It took me a couple of tries, had to follow the instructions exactly.
Help! I can't seem to get this to work using textedit. Am I doing something wrong? When I download the template, I don't know how to add my logo. I went to box.net and uploaded my logo but it still doesn't work.
I had it working a month ago. I used the trial version of textmate. A friend was playing on my computer and screwed with the signature in mail and now I can't figure out how I did it. Do I have to use textmate? At this point I would have to pay for it and I really didn't want to do that.
AAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!!!!
I found this post on creating html formatted signatures for Apple Mail very helpful. I have one problem. I used a gif in my signature and it does not show up in the signature, though it does show up in the preferences. Any suggestions?