The "My signature" pane

“My signature” is a button on the Outlook compose ribbon. It opens a small pane that applies your signature on demand.

Most of the time you will never need it. It exists for the times when the automatic path cannot do its job.

Opening the pane

The button is there in Outlook on Windows, Outlook on Mac and Outlook on the web. Outlook on your phone has no button; see where it is not available.

1. In Outlook, start a new message, a reply or a forward.
2. On the ribbon, choose My signature. It sits in a group called Signature.

The pane opens. While it finds out about your signature it says “Checking your signature”, and then shows a preview labelled with which signature it is: new messages, or replies and forwards.

If this device already holds a copy of your signature from an earlier message, the preview usually appears straight away. The pane draws the kept copy first, then asks Sigil whether it is still current, and replaces it only if something has changed. On a slow connection, which is often why somebody opens the pane in the first place, you see your signature without waiting for the whole of it to download again. See how your signature works.

A kept copy that records who it was fetched for waits a moment longer, until the pane knows who is signed in. On a computer that two people share, that is what stops one of them opening the pane and seeing the other’s details.

What it does

It shows you a preview of the signature Sigil would give this message, with “Checking your signature…” while it fetches. Opening the pane does not change the message: nothing is applied until you choose Apply my signature.

The preview is laid out at the pane’s own width, the way a narrow email window would lay it out, so text wraps and nothing is shrunk. Only where something in the signature cannot wrap, such as a fixed-width table or a banner image, is the preview scaled down, and then only enough to show the whole of it rather than its left third. A plain text signature is never made smaller than it will actually be.

If it cannot apply a signature, it says why, in language you can act on rather than an error code.

It offers a download of your signature as a self-contained file.

Where your organisation has switched it on and there are details for you to fill in, it also offers “Edit my details”, which opens the page where you fill in your own signature details. See filling in your own details.

To apply your signature yourself:

1. Open the pane from the compose ribbon.
2. Choose Apply my signature.

The button reads “Applying” while it works. When it has finished, the pane says “Signature applied” and shows the signature it put into your message. If it could not, the pane says why.

What it tells you when something is wrong

The pane distinguishes between problems worth retrying and problems that retrying cannot fix.

Where a retry might work, the Apply and Download buttons stay where they are and the explanation sits beneath them, so the button you just pressed does not move. A failed sign-in, a connection that dropped, or Outlook declining the signature all fall into this group.

A dropped connection only shows as an error when your device has no kept copy of your signature. If it has one, Apply puts that copy in and says “Signature applied”, exactly as the automatic path would. See how your signature works.

Where nothing can be applied to this mailbox at all, the buttons are removed and only the explanation remains. That covers a mailbox with no signature configured, an organisation that has not finished setting Sigil up, a subscription that is not active, and a version of Outlook too old to support the add-in. Offering a button that could only fail would waste your time and tell you nothing.

Each of these names who can fix it, which is usually your IT team rather than you.

One of those messages is worth reading loosely. If the pane says “Sigil isn’t switched on for your organisation yet. Ask your IT team.”, it can mean two other things as well. Your own mailbox may have been kept out of Sigil deliberately, which is a normal thing for an organisation to do for a shared or unattended mailbox. Or your organisation may have paused delivery for everybody, which is what IT does while a signature is still being set up.

The add-in cannot tell the three apart, because Sigil declines them all the same way. Your IT team can see which it is.

When Sigil answers that there is no signature for this mailbox, or that it is not switched on, or that the subscription is not active, the pane also removes any kept copy it had drawn and deletes it from the device. Showing it again on the next open would only show a signature already known to be wrong. A pane that needs you to sign in, or that cannot reach Sigil, leaves a kept copy on screen, because that copy is still the last signature you had.

The pane also keeps a subscription problem separate from a connection problem. A lapsed subscription says so rather than reading as a network fault you could fix by trying again.

It draws one more line for the same reason. A connection that could not reach Sigil at all asks you to check your connection, while Sigil answering with a problem of its own says so and suggests trying again in a moment. The second is not something your connection can fix, and if it persists your IT team has something concrete to report.

Opening the pane does not front an error on its own. If something is merely transient, you find out when you press a button rather than the moment the pane loads.

Why it exists

The automatic path runs in a part of Outlook with no user interface. It can sign you in silently, but it cannot show you a sign-in prompt.

So on your very first message, or after your session expires, or after a multi-factor prompt, the automatic path may have no way to authenticate you. When that happens it stops quietly rather than interrupting you, because an error bar on every message you write would be worse than a missing signature.

The pane can show a sign-in prompt. That is what makes it the fix: choosing Sign in and apply in the pane completes the sign-in that the automatic path could not, and from then on the automatic path works. Opening the pane does not raise the prompt by itself. It tries a silent sign-in, and if that is not enough it changes the button and waits for you.

When the pane needs you to sign in, it says “Sign in to see and apply your signature” and the main button reads Sign in and apply instead of Apply my signature.

1. Open the pane from the compose ribbon.
2. Choose Sign in and apply.
3. Sign in with your work account in the prompt that appears.

Once you are signed in, the pane applies your signature and says “Signature applied”. If it says “Sign-in didn’t complete, so your signature wasn’t applied. Try again.”, choose the button once more. From then on the automatic path signs you in on its own.

Download my signature

The download saves your signature as a standalone HTML file with the images embedded in it, so it works anywhere without needing anything else alongside it.

It is useful for pasting your signature into another system, keeping a personal copy, or sending somebody exactly what your signature looks like.

1. Open the pane from the compose ribbon.
2. Choose Download my signature.

The button reads “Preparing” while the file is built, and you may be asked to sign in if you have not already. The file is saved as “Sigil signature.html”, and the pane says “Signature downloaded”.

Where it is not available

Outlook for iOS and Android have no “My signature” button. Outlook mobile activates add-ins in read mode only, and a compose pane is not one of the exceptions.

Your signature is still applied automatically on mobile. What you lose is the manual fallback.

If your signature is not working on your phone, open the pane once on a computer and choose Sign in and apply. The sign-in is tied to you rather than to a device, so fixing it once fixes both.

If the pane itself does not appear

The button appears on the compose ribbon once the add-in has been deployed to you. If it is not there, the add-in has not reached your mailbox yet.

Deployment propagates over 6 to 72 hours, so if your organisation rolled it out in the last few days, waiting is the answer. Otherwise ask your IT team, who can check whether you are in scope for the deployment.