Outlook desktop or 365
Instructions
Critical note for Mac users:
Use Chrome or Firefox for the process below.
Using Safari will cause formatting issues.
Copy the appropriate template into your email signature
1. In the list of templates, click on your country to expand the list of Elevate office addresses in that geography. For Associates who work remotely, each country also includes a ‘Remote’ option without an office address.
2. Click on the link corresponding to how many phone numbers you need to include. (Each link opens in a separate browser tab, so you can continue to follow these instructions in this tab.)
3. Once you have selected the most appropriate signature template for yourself, click anywhere inside that new browser tab and Select All (Ctrl-A on Windows / Command-A on Mac), then Copy (Ctrl-C on Windows / Command-C on Mac).
Important: Use the keyboard shortcuts mentioned above to ensure you capture all of the underlying HTML code that ensures the correct formatting of your signature. (You can’t see the HTML code directly, but it’s there ‘behind the scenes’ in your browser window.)
4. Open Outlook’s signature editor
- On desktop versions of Outlook (both Mac and Windows), just create a New email message, then in the Signatures drop-down, click on Signatures….
- On the Office365 online version of Outlook, click on the cog icon in the upper right, then look under Your app settings and click on Mail. Then look for Email signature in the left sidebar and click on that.
5. Add a new signature and give it a name, then select it as your default signature for new messages.
6. Click inside the signature editing pane and delete any placeholder text that’s already there. If you want to type a standard closing remark such as “Regards,” do so before pasting in anything. Enter one or two line returns and then Paste (Ctrl-V on Windows / Command-V on Mac) your new signature template.
7. Critical step after pasting:
- On Mac, after you paste, Microsoft displays a small icon with different paste options. Click on the icon and choose Keep Source Highlighting.
- On Office365 (Outlook online), paste, then choose Paste simple HTML.
- On the Windows desktop version of Outlook, no special paste options are necessary.
Edit your new signature
Edit your name, title and phone number(s)
- Please be very careful to edit only those specific strings of text.
- Be especially careful not to alter/delete any line returns, as there is text formatting information invisibly embedded in them.
- Please please do your part to ensure company-wide consistency by not customizing your signature in any other way, including adding other custom text or links.
Phone numbers
- Please use spaces as separators, not hyphens.
- You may list your phone numbers in order of preference, which means you can retype the labels ‘direct’ and ‘mobile’ to reverse their order. However, please be careful to only retype existing text – don’t copy and paste to move anything around, as that can break the underlying code that defines the formatting.
- If you have only 1 phone number, it does not need a label at all.
Social media
Do not edit the pre-formatted company LinkedIn and Twitter links. Adding your own personal links is not an option at this time. We are considering adding that as an option in the future.
Check your new signature
After configuring your new signature, create a new email and compare your signature to the template you copied from your browser. If the formatting doesn’t match, you may have missed an important detail in the instructions above and/or accidentally ‘broken’ the formatting while editing your personal details. If that happens, it is best to start over, double-check the instructions, and edit your details more carefully the next time. The vast majority of issues and questions can be solved by carefully following the instructions above.
