Creating your own customized signature is really a painful task, once it was created the level of satisfaction is high.
Sometimes once in a while, you have to change your computer or Laptop and some of the customized platforms like contacts, tasks, templates, or even signatures, you don’t want to create again.
Outlook users easily backup and restore signatures, from one computer to another so that it is not required to manually create the signatures.
I personally used to create multiple signatures in Outlook again and again until I am not aware of this feature.
Export Signatures from Microsoft Outlook
Outlook.com is a web-based platform, once you create your own customized signature it is permanently saved in your profile until you modify or delete it, you can open your Outlook account from any computer having internet and get excess to your Signature.
Import and Export Outlook Signatures are only necessary for Outlook applications.
Your Outlook signatures are stored in small files within your user profile folder. These files can be exported for backup purposes if needed.
Although Outlook does not have a menu option specifically for exporting signatures, you can easily access the source folder and manually copy your signature files to the desired backup location.
Step 1: – Close Outlook in case it’s open
Step 2: – Open Folder on your computer, Type ‘%APPDATA%\Microsoft\Signatures‘ in the address box and hit ‘Enter.’
Step 3: – You should see three files for each of your signatures:
- An HTML Document (.htm)
- Text Document (.txt)
- Rich Text File (.rtf)
You won’t see the file name extensions (.htm, .rtf, and .txt), because all are hidden, to display file extensions, simply open File Explorer and select the View tab. Then, check the box next to File name extensions.
In addition to the signature files, there is a folder that contains at least three additional files.
This folder would contain at least the following three files: –
- A file containing the actual signature
- A file containing a list of all the signatories
- A file containing a list of all the dates when the signature was used
- colorschememapping.xml
- filelist.xml
- themedata.thmx
If there are images included in the signature, there will be associated image files. with the extension PNG.
Step 4: – Next step is to copy the files, Press the’ Ctrl-A‘ Keyboard Shortcut to select all the files available in the folder and then press ‘Ctrl-C‘ to copy all of them.
In the above explanation, it is very clear for every signature you have three files (HTML Document (.htm), Text Document (.txt), Rich Text File (.rtf), and a folder.
Select the signature and find related files and copy using Ctrl+C.
You should always back up all files in your signatures folder. However, if you only need to back up one file, the .htm file for each signature is the most important.
You can create a new signature by double-clicking the .htm file and opening it in your web browser. Then, simply copy and paste the content of the signature from the HTML file into the new signature box in Outlook.
If you want all your signatures to show up automatically in Outlook, you should make sure you back up every single file and folder in the %APPDATA%\Microsoft\Signatures.
Restore Signatures to Outlook in another Computer
Restoring the copied files and folders from the existing computer to your new computer system, which automatically fetches all the signatures.
Type %APPDATA%\Microsoft\Signatures to the address bar of the folder of your destination computer.
Or click Win + R which opens the run dialog box, type the same address (%APPDATA%\Microsoft\Signatures), and hit enter, which will also walk you to that folder.
Hit Enter, the same folder you copied all the three files and folder are opened in your new computer, but the thing is it’s empty, paste all the required files you copied in the earlier step using Ctrl + V.
All set, now when you click on insert signature all your customized signatures are available in Outlook.
Wrap Up
In conclusion, yes. In fact, Outlook has an amazing and simple tool to let you import and export your signature, but it’s hidden away in a Permissions dialog, and most people don’t know about it.
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