Things You'll Need:
- Mac computer
- Mail application
- HTML experience
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Step 1
The first thing that you need to do is create your email signature using HTML. Open your favorite editor and design your signature. You can do just about anything you like however I would highly recommend laying your signature out in a table to keep everything nicely spaced. You can get a great start by using a template provided by one of your social networks. I based mine off of a template on LinkedIn. Make sure you save your file with an html extension.
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Step 2
Next, open your mail application and then go to your Mail preferences. Once the Preferences dialog box is open click on the "Signatures" tab and create a new signature by clicking on the "+" sign. This process works the best if you only have one signature listed. If you have old signatures that you will no longer be using go ahead and delete them now. Once you are done close your Mail application.
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Step 3
Next open Safari and then click "File" and then "Open File". Choose the html file that you created in step 1. After the file is open click "File" and then "Save As". In the subsequent dialog box you will need to navigate to the proper folder where you will save your html file as a "web archive". Navigate back to user library folder on your hard disk. Once the Library folder is open scroll down until you find the "Mail" folder. Then scroll down until you find the "Signatures" folder.
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Step 4
In the signatures folder you should see two files (if you deleted all but one signature). One file will be a ".webarchive" and the other file will be a ".plist" file. Click the ".webarchive" file and it should automatically copy the name of this file into the "Export As" field at the top. Verify that the Format selected is "Web Archive" and click "Save".
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Step 5
This process will copy your html web archive over the plain signature you created earlier. Open Mail and make sure your signature is selected to work with your account. (Under Mail preferences) Then when you start a new email you should see your new html signature!
Comments
mblooman said
on 11/1/2009 did it - all good - except the pictures don't stay in the email - appears on my draft - but not on the received version - whats up with that?
hungle said
on 9/5/2009 hey guys, for some reason I don't have the signature folder in mail/library/harddisk, hence I get stuck on step 4. Any workaround or do I need to reinstall mac mail somehow?
jtrue said
on 8/11/2009 cbfarrell - After you have designed your html signature and opened it in safari you should see your signature. You should not see raw code at this point... While your signature file is open in Safari you need to click "File" and then "Save As" and navigate to the signature folder as described in the article. The idea is to save your new html signature file with the same name as the existing signature that you have in Mail. To do that you can either type in the entire name of the webarchive file in your Signature folder or you can click it once and the name should be automatically filled into the Export As field of the dialog box. The "Export As" dialog box appears after you click "File" and then "Save As". I hope this helps.
cbfarrell said
on 8/10/2009 "Click the ".webarchive" file and it should automatically copy the name of this file into the "Export As" field at the top. "
At the top of what?! I don't see any "Export As" option. When I click the .webarchive file it simply opens a new tab in Safari with the html info (not code). There is no place to export it to, and no option for doing so.
pyvonne said
on 1/14/2009 Thank you jtrue. Tried this, and it worked perfectly. I'm new to Mac, but I'm loving the experience. I have another question related to Mail/Hotmail on the Mac - can I send it to you? And if so, how?