How to add a signature in Outlook

New Outlook & Outlook on the web

1. Click the ⚙️ gear → Account → Signatures (on the web: Settings → Mail → Compose and reply).
2. Click New signature, name it, and paste your signature HTML into the editor.
3. Under Select default signatures, choose it for New messages and Replies/forwards.
4. Save. New Outlook syncs this signature to the cloud — it follows your account.

Classic Outlook (Windows desktop)

1. File → Options → Mail → Signatures…
2. Click New, name it, and paste your signature into the edit box.
3. On the right, set the defaults per account: New messages / Replies.
4. OK to save. Classic Outlook stores signatures locally per machine.

Tips that save support tickets

Building the signature itself? Design it in the free ProSignature editor — email-safe HTML that pastes cleanly into every Outlook variant (our one-click auto-install currently supports Gmail).

Which Outlook are you actually using?

“Outlook” now refers to several different applications with different signature settings, which is why generic instructions so often fail. Classic Outlook for Windows keeps signatures under File › Options › Mail › Signatures (also reachable from a new message via the Signature button on the Message ribbon). New Outlook for Windows and Outlook on the web share a different path: Settings › Mail › Compose and reply, where the signature editor sits at the top. Outlook for Mac keeps its own signatures in its Settings. Each of these stores signatures separately, so setting one does not populate the others.

The storage difference that causes most confusion

Classic Outlook for Windows stores signatures as files in your local Windows profile, which has two consequences people rarely expect: your signature does not follow you to another computer, and it does not appear in Outlook on the web even for the same mailbox. New Outlook and the web version store the signature with the mailbox instead, so it travels with the account. If you have just switched machines or moved to new Outlook and your signature has “disappeared”, this is almost always why — it was never lost, it was local. For organisations, this is also the argument for deploying signatures centrally rather than asking each employee to recreate one on every device: see team deployment.

Set defaults, then test

1. Open the signature editor for your version of Outlook using the paths above.
2. Create a new signature and give it a name you will recognise (for example “Work — full”).
3. Paste your signature. If it came from a generator, paste it as rich content so the inline styling survives.
4. Set the defaults: which signature is used for new messages and which for replies and forwards. Many people set the first and forget the second.
5. If you have multiple accounts, repeat per account — Outlook assigns signatures per email address.
6. Send a test to another address and check it on both desktop and phone.

Rendering quirks specific to Outlook — it uses Word's engine for HTML — are covered in the Outlook signature guide.

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