How to create html email signatures in Mail on your Mac OS X

Need a fancy email signature with all of your social networking information? The Mail application on your Mac doesn't provide an easy solution to adding html to your email signature but it can be done with a few easy steps.

Difficulty:

Moderate

Instructions

Things You'll Need

• Mac computer
• Mail application
• HTML experience

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.

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.

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.

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".

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!

Tips & Warnings

• Get creative with your html code but don't go overboard!

• Adding images either embedded or remotely will increase the size of every email you send out so keep graphics to a minimum.