Tag Archives: Office 2007

How to find your email signature folder in Outlook

…and how to edit it

If you use Outlook to send and receive emails, you’re probably also using the ’email signature’ facility that allows you to create a custom bit of text and images that appears at the end of the emails you write.

The problem is, the in-built email signature editor in Outlook is very basic! If you want to create something a bit more complex, sometimes the only option is to do it manually.

Each email signature is made up of three files – signature.rft, signature.html, and signature.txt. These are three different versions of the same signature but used for different types of emails, for example, plain text or rich text. (Note: where I’ve used the word ‘signature’ in the file names in this paragraph, for your email signature, it will be whatever you have named it e.g. ‘My Email Sig.txt’)

Together with these three files there is usually also a directory (aka folder) which contains the corresponding images.

If you can find these files, edit them manually, and save them as they are, you’ll be able to do a lot more in terms of layout and functionality than if you’re just editing these through the Outlook email signature editor.

Firstly, create the files (the signatures folder is created when the first email signature is saved):

Open Outlook, click the ‘tools’ option from the top row of options, then click ‘options’ from the drop-down menu
From the ‘Options’ dialogue box that pops up, click the ‘mail format’ tab then click ‘signatures’
from within the ‘Signatures and stationery’ dialogue box, click ‘new’, give it a name, then press OK then save.

from within the ‘Signatures and stationery’ dialogue box, click ‘new’, give it a name, then press OK then save.

Now to edit the files:
To find these files we’ve just created:

Go to file explorer – either press ‘Windows key’ + E or go to my computer
Type ‘%APPDATA%’ (without the quotes) into the address bar at the top and press enter or from My Computer navigate from C: to ‘Users’, ‘Your user name’, ‘appdata’
from ‘appdata’ click on ‘Microsoft’ then ‘signatures’ (please note this folder won’t exists until you’ve created your first email signature through Outlook)

Open the file explorer, and type ‘%APPDATA%’ (without the quotes) into the address bar at the top then press enter

Go to file explorer – either press ‘Windows key’ + E or go to my computer

The text file can be easily edited using Notepad or similar. This is the signature that is included when the mail format is ‘plain text’ meaning you can’t have any pictures included and you have limited control over formatting and fonts.
The HTML file can be edited using Notepad if you know HTML, or alternatively, you may need a visual HTML editor to make changes.
The RTF file can be edited using MS Word or similar. The RTF anf HTML files are included when you send your email in rich text format
Don’t forget to stick to the hyperlink format and include any images you include in the respective folder within the signatures folder

Outlook 2007 – adding SMTP authentication

When using a laptop or mobile device, you’re potentially going to be sending emails over many different internet networks. In order to make sure that only the allowed users are using a particular SMTP to send email, they commonly require a user-name and password to log into the SMTP server every time an email is sent. This is not something you’d normally notice as your computer should do this automatically in the background, however, if that authentication fails, you’ll not be able to send emails

If your outgoing email server on Outlook 2007 requires authentication, use the following steps to add the user-name and password:

Open Outlook
Click the ‘tools’ tab from the top menu then click ‘account settings’
Highlight the account you’d like to edit then select ‘change’
On the internet e-mail settings page click ‘more settings’
On the internet e-mail settings page click ‘more settings’
On the new window, click the ‘outgoing server’ tab
On the new window, click the ‘outgoing server’ tab
Change the following settings:
1. Tick the box ‘my outgoing server requires authentication’
2. Tick the ‘log on using’ button
3. Type in your normal username and password
4. Tick the ‘remember password’ button
Click ‘OK’ which will take you back to the main ‘email settings’ page
Click ‘next’
Click ‘finish’

How to create an outlook email template

How to create an outlook email template

If you use Outlook and often have to write similar emails, Instead of re-writing them every time it might be a better idea to create a template.

This is very simple to do and might save you a lot of time! Here’s how to do it:

Write your email as normal including subject and content
Click the Outlook button and choose ‘save as’

Click the Outlook button

When the save dialogue box appears, save the message on your computer.

Choose 'save as' from the drop down menu

Now, when you want to use your template, just double click the saved email and you can use as many times as you like

Convert text to lower-case, upper-case or capitalised the easy way!

CAPS-LOCK = SHOUTING

This tutorial is specifically for Microsoft Word and Outlook, however, as with many keyboard shortcuts, they’ll often be supported by many other applications

Ever accidentally hit the CAPS LOCK button and written a whole paragraph in capitals? Or how about got one of those shouty emails all in caps that are difficult to read?

Good news – there is an ultra-simple way to swap between capitals and lowercase! It’ll even capitalise the starts of paragraphs for you!

Simply, highlight the offending text, hold down ‘SHIFT’ and press ‘F3’. That’s it!

In Outlook, you’ll have to click reply or forward first to make the text area editable but it still works!

Very handy!