Test emails
Preview shows a signature with sample data inside the portal. A test email shows the real thing in a real client, which is the only way to know how Outlook actually renders it.
Sending one
Section titled “Sending one”From the portal, send a rendered signature to an inbox. The mail arrives containing the signature exactly as a recipient would receive it, including inline images, the banner that is live if a window is open, and the applicable footer, unless the template keeps the footer off. You can ask for a different banner, or none, but not for a different footer.
You need the Admin or Editor role, or a custom role that can reach Templates, images and drafts.
- Open Templates in the portal sidebar.
- Choose Send a test.
- Under Render as, enter the address of the mailbox whose signature you want to see.
- Under Signature, pick New-message signature or Reply signature.
- Under Banner, leave Live banner, if any to get what a real send would carry right now, or pick No banner or one of your banners by name. A banner picked by name is shown even when the template keeps campaign banners off; Live banner, if any respects that switch.
- Under Send to, enter the recipient, or leave it blank to send it to yourself.
- Choose Send test.
The portal confirms the address the test went to.
The Render as address has to be a mailbox Sigil can find in your directory. If it is not, the send is refused with “No such user” and nothing goes out.
The message arrives from signatures@usesigil.app with the subject “Signature
test:” followed by the template name and the mailbox it was rendered as. A short
grey line above a rule says which signature it is and names the banner it
carries, or says “No banner”, and the signature itself starts below the rule. If a test seems not to have arrived, search for that
subject, including in junk mail.
Where a test can be sent
Section titled “Where a test can be sent”The recipient defaults to your own address, and you can name a different one, as long as it is a mailbox in your own directory.
| Recipient | Result |
|---|---|
| Your own signed-in address | Sent |
| Any mailbox in your Microsoft 365 directory | Sent |
| Anything else | Refused, with a message saying why |
That covers what the feature is for, which is seeing a signature land in a real inbox, usually your own or the colleague you are setting up. It leaves no route to an address outside your organisation.
The check is Sigil’s own rather than something the mail platform does. The platform restricts the address mail is sent from, which is always Sigil’s own sending domain, and places no restriction at all on where it goes. Without a check in front of it, the template capability would carry with it a scriptable outbound mailer, sending from Sigil’s domain to any address in the world.
A partner Technician running a test passes too. Their address is not in the client’s directory, but it is the address of the person doing the work.
This page previously said Sigil placed no restriction on where a test could go. That was true until August 2026 and is not any more.
Once a message is accepted, what happens next is the receiving side’s decision, as it is for any mail. A refusal comes back as a send error in the portal rather than disappearing quietly, so if a test does not arrive and no error was shown, check the junk folder before assuming the send failed.
The check does not make the endpoint safe for an API key, which is still refused it. A credential that can mail a rendered signature unattended, to anybody in your organisation, is a different thing from an administrator doing it once to check a layout. See what a key is left out of.
What to check
Section titled “What to check”Open the test in the clients your organisation actually uses. Outlook on Windows is worth checking most carefully, because it renders with Word’s engine and is the most restrictive of the group.
Look at the layout at a narrow window width, since a fixed-width table can force horizontal scrolling. Check that images appear rather than showing as broken. Check that conditional sections collapsed the way you expected, with no stray separators or empty labels. And read the footer, if you have one, since it is the part nobody proofreads.
Testing a different person’s signature
Section titled “Testing a different person’s signature”A test email can already show any colleague’s signature: put their address in Render as. If you want their live signature as a file rather than as mail, use the download action on the Templates view, which saves it as a standalone HTML file.
- Open Templates in the portal sidebar.
- Choose Download.
- Under Render as, enter the mailbox’s address.
- Under Signature, pick New-message signature or Reply signature.
- Choose Download.
The file is saved as signature-<address>.html, with the images inlined so it
renders anywhere.
The download resolves the rules exactly as a real request would, so it tells you what that person is being served right now.
To find out why they are being served it, use Test a user on the rules page instead. It reads the directory live rather than from the resolution cache and names the rule that decided each role, which is the difference between seeing the outcome and understanding it.
Testing a banner before it launches
Section titled “Testing a banner before it launches”Pick the banner under Banner when you send the test. Any banner can be chosen, whatever its window: one scheduled for next month, one that is paused, one that has ended. The test carries it as though it were live, and nothing changes for anybody else.
The list of banners by name appears if you can also manage banners, which among the built-in roles means Admin. An Editor sees Live banner, if any and No banner only. Somebody who manages banners without reaching templates has their own route: Preview on the Banners view, with its Send test to me button. See checking a banner before it goes live.
A click on the banner in a test email is tracked like any other, so it counts towards that banner’s total in link clicks.
This page used to suggest setting a short window covering now and then putting the real window back. That is no longer needed.
Who can send them
Section titled “Who can send them”Anyone holding the template capability, which is the one that covers the template library. Among the built-in roles that is Admin and Editor. A custom role that can reach Templates, images and drafts can send them too, and so can partner Owners, Admins and Technicians working for a client.
Read that alongside the section above: granting somebody the template capability also lets them mail a rendered signature to any colleague in your directory, from Sigil’s sending domain. It is a reason to keep the Editor role to people you would trust with the template library anyway.