Standardizing signatures across a network

[Dou Lowe]

What's the best way to create standard, company-wide signatures that include
an employee's name & title along with company information, in a standard
font?

We have about 75 employees, enough that I don't want to go to each
employee's computer to create the signatures manually. We have a mix of 2002
& 2003, and no consistency on whether then mail is HTML or RTF or whether
WordMail or Outlook is used as the email editor.

What I did was create .htm, .rtf, and .txt signatures for everyone on a
network share, then wrote a batch file they could run to copy the files to
%USERPROFILE%\Application Data\Microsoft\Signatures.

That got the signature files to the correct location so the users could then
select the correct file. But I'm having all kinds of problems with the
consistency of the formatting. I think the trouble is related to the
template used for the email. Our system-wide normal.dot (on a network share
that Workgroup Templates points to) has Arial 10pt as the font for Normal
paragraphs, but when I edit a signature using the Advanced Edit button from
the Edit Signature box in Outlook, the Normal paragraph has reverted to
Times Roman 12pt. If I change this style to Arial 10 and choose Apply to
Template, that seems to solve the problem. But I don't want to go to every
machine to do that if I can possibly avoid it.

Any suggestions?

--Doug

 

[Sue Mosher [MVP-Outlook]]

IMO, the best way would be to use a server-based tool that extracts individual information from AD for insertion as part of the signature. That way, the users never touch the signatures. A couple of tools that do this are listed at http://www.slipstick.com/addins/content_control.htm

--
Sue Mosher, Outlook MVP
Author of Configuring Microsoft Outlook 2003

and Microsoft Outlook Programming - Jumpstart for
Administrators, Power Users, and Developers