miércoles, 10 de abril de 2013

How to create an external signature for Outlook 2010

It's usual to have a nice signature to send emails to customers or partners, including the company logo, your phone number, position, etc.When you are sharing emails with your coworkers, however, that signature is just annoying.

Here you have a quick trick to create separate external and internal signatures in Microsoft Outlook 2010 (the one I'm using at work). If you have the instructions for other tools, let me know and I'll add them.
  1. Create a template with the fancy signature:
    1. Create a dummy email with the nice signature including all the icons, telephone numbers, etc.
    2. Go to Save as. 
    3. Select Outlook Template (.oft) in the drop list and save the dummy email as a template.
    4. Pay attention to the location, you'll need it later.
    5. Close the dummy email (you can discard it).
  2. Create a new button to send external emails:
    1. Go to File > Options > Customize Ribbon and enable the Developer tab in the Main Tabs list (right box). Click OK.
    2. Go to Developer > Macros. Type in a name (External, for instance). A Visual Basic project will be created and open.
    3. Add the following text:
    4. Sub External()
      Set newItem = Application.CreateItemFromTemplate("C:\Documents and Settings\MyUser\Application Data\Microsoft\Templates\External.oft")
      newItem.Display
      Set newItem = Nothing
      End Sub
    5. Replace the path with the actual location of your template.
    6. Save and exit.
  3. Add the new button to the tabs
    1. Go to File > Options > Customize Ribbon and select the Tab in which you want to add the new button. I selected Home (Mail).
    2. Add a New Group in that tab (use the button at the bottom of the right box).
    3. Right click on the New Group and rename it (I called it New External).
    4. In the left drop list, go to Macros and select the newly created macro (Project1.External, for instance). 
    5. Click Add >> and add it to the New External group.
    6. Click OK.
  4. Violà! You should have that new button in your tab and it will open the template with the fancy signature.
Let me know if it works for you :)