How to Add Company Email Signature in Office 365?

An email signature tells about the sender's job, work, and, for a company, it also signifies the brand. A company using Office 365 services for managing emails can configure their account to automatically insert the company email signature while sending an email. Using the Exchange Admin Center, you can add company email signature in Office 365.

The email signature added using the Microsoft 365 EAC works for all users in the organization. Configuring the email signature is simple. In this guide, we will discuss the steps to add, change, or remove your company email signature and also how you can send a customized email signature for an email using Outlook configured with Office 365 account.

Why Do You Need to Add Company Email Signature in Microsoft 365?

Emails contain precise and concise details, so why do we need to add anything except the message? Adding a company email signature helps to: 

• Standardize the outgoing emails: When you setup company email signature in Microsoft 365, it ensures that every email is sent with the same signature.
• Save time: Employees do not have to manually add company email signature when creating a new email. Microsoft 365 will automatically append the signature to emails.
• Promote the brand: An email with your company's logo and name naturally supports your brand value and promotes it with the recipient.
• Regulations: In some countries, it is mandatory for a few specific types of businesses to add company email signature.
• Easy to manage: You can quickly update the logo, name, address, or phone number of the email signature from a centralized platform.

Things to Know Before You Add Company Email Signature in Microsoft 365

Before you start adding the email signature for your organization, you should be familiar with the following points:

• The email signature is not added while your employees are composing an email in Outlook. Exchange adds it automatically during transit.
• You add an email signature using mail flow rules, and it takes up to 30 minutes for the rule to start working. So, do not expect instant results.
• By default, the rule is applied to all users in your organization. To limit it to specific users, you must add conditions during rule creation.
• Email signature may fail to work in an encrypted email. Therefore, make sure to specify a fallback action while adding a rule to handle such cases.
• The email signature can be added as plain text or in HTML format. For HTML, use inline CSS. Also, the character limit for the signature is only 5000, including HTML and CSS.
• You must have Mail flow permission in Exchange Online to add an email signature.
• Before implementing the rule for the whole organization, run a test to see if the receiver is seeing the signature in the correct format.
• Notify your employees not to insert an email signature through Outlook, or the final email at the recipient will contain two email signatures. One added by a mail flow rule and the other added in Outlook.

How to Create Email Signature in Office 365?

You can create a new email signature in Office 365 by creating a disclaimer using the mail flow rules in the Exchange Admin Center with the following steps: 

Step 1: Go to the Microsoft 365 Exchange Admin Center page and log in

Step 2: From the left navigation pane, click Mail flow and select Rules.

Step 3: Click Add a rule and choose the Apply disclaimers option.

Step 4: Give a name to the disclaimer. In the "Apply this rule if" section, for the first dropdown, choose "The sender" option. For the next dropdown, choose "is external/internal," and then choose the "Inside Organization" option.

Step 5: In the "Do the following" section, for the second dropdown, choose:

• Append a disclaimer: To add company email signature in Microsoft 365 at the end of the message in an email.
• Prepend a disclaimer: To add company email signature at the beginning of the message in an email.

After that, click "Enter text" to provide the signature content.

Step 6: Enter the signature. You can use either plain text or provide HTML syntax for specific styling of the email signature. Finally, click Save.

Step 7: After specifying the email signature, click "Select one". A new window will pop up and ask you to choose a fallback option. The fallback is used in case Microsoft fails to add an email signature. Choose, as per your requirement, from one of the following options:

Wrap: Microsoft will send the original email as an attachment in a new email. The new email will be sent with the email signature.

Ignore: Microsoft will allow the original email to be sent without the company's email signature.

Reject: Email without the company's signature will not be sent, and the sender will receive a not delivered message.

Step 8: After configuring the conditions for the rule, click Next.

Step 9: Apply rule settings. For "Rule mode", select "Enforce" and choose an activation date/time for the rule. Then, click Next.

Step 10: Review the configuration and settings of the rule. Click Finish to add your company email signature in Microsoft 365.

Microsoft 365 will begin to add company email signature in Office 365. Once done, you will see the message "Transport rule created successfully". Click Done to see the rule.

Step 11: By default, the rule will be disabled. You must enable it manually. To enable it, click the rule and click the toggle button "Enable or disable rule". Wait for a few seconds; the rule status will change to "Enable".

The rule is now enabled. But it may take up to 30 minutes to get to work. After that, every new outgoing email from your organization will contain your company's email signature.

Read Also: How to Manage Outlook External Email Warning in Office 365?

How to Add Company Email Signature to Specific User in Office 365?

In case you want to add the email signature only to a few particular users in your organization, say, only the sales and customer support departments, you have two ways to do it:

Option 1: Add company email signature in Office 365 for a specific group

This is the simplest and easiest way to manage email signatures for a set of users. You can create an Office 365 group and, in the group, add all the users for whom you want to add the email signature.

After that, for the group you created, create a new rule with these steps:

Step 1: Go to Exchange Admin Center and select the option to create a new rule as you did in the above section.

Step 2: Give a name to the rule. In the "Apply this rule if" section, for the first dropdown, choose "The sender" option. For the next dropdown, choose "is a member of this group" and then choose the group. If required, you can add multiple groups.

Step 3: After adding all the groups, configure and set up the rule.

Option 2: Individually select the users

You can also select users individually while creating the mail flow rule for adding company email signature in Microsoft 365. Just like you added the groups when configuring the rule in the above steps, you can add Microsoft 365 users also. For that, while creating the rule, use the option "is this person".

Then, search for users, add them to the rule, and finish configuring the rule. Once the email signature rule is created, remember to enable it, or it will not work in your Microsoft 365 account.

How to Change Company Email Signature in Office 365?

Using the Office 365 Exchange Admin Center, you can change your company's email signature. To edit the email signature in Office 365, follow these steps:

Step 1: Log in to Exchange Admin Center. Click Mail flow > Rules

Step 2: Select the rule that adds the company email signature to outgoing emails and click Edit.

Step 3: Click on the existing email signature configured in the rule.

Step 4: Edit the signature and click Save.

Step 5: The signature is changed. Click Save to save the changes.

In addition to changing the company email signature in Office 365, you can use the above steps to change the scope of the rule, conditions, time, rule mode, priority, and other settings.

How to Remove Company Email Signature in Office 365?

To remove or delete company email signature in Office 365, you have to delete the rule/disclaimer that adds the email signature to an outgoing email. You can do it with the following steps:

Step 1: Go to the "Rules" page in Exchange Admin Center.

Step 2: Select the rule that is responsible to add email signature and click the Delete button.

Step 3: Click Confirm to delete the rule that adds the email signature.

Note: If this was the only email signature rule applied to your organization, then once you delete email signature rule in Microsoft 365, no outgoing email will carry your company's email signature.

How to Add Email Signature in Outlook?

Standard users or employees can also add email signature to new outgoing emails sent from Outlook with these steps:

Step 1: Open Outlook, click File, and choose Options.

Step 2: In the Mail category, select Signatures.

Step 3: Click the New button and provide a unique name to the email signature. Click OK.

Step 4: In the body, create the email signature. Use either plain text, business card, or image. Finally, click OK.

Step 5: To add the email signature in an email, create a new email, click Insert > Signature, and select the email signature you created earlier.

Does Microsoft Backup Email Signatures?

No. As I said earlier, the email signatures are added through mail flow rules, and Microsoft does not keep track of or back up these rules. However, your emails are backed up through the retention and backup features of Microsoft 365. But these features are not designed to give you an independent standalone copy of your data.

Therefore, often Exchange administrators who are looking for backup solutions that allow them to access the data anytime use a professional Office 365 backup tool and save data to offline storage. One such tool that allows administrators to download all the user mailboxes and public folder data to a local PC is Kernel Office 365 Backup & Restore

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Conclusion

Email signatures are important for your brand. Add company email signature in Office 365 to make sure every outgoing email from your organization carries the same brand signal. Always run a test to see if everything is working as expected before you enable the rule for every member in your company.