How to Create, Edit, and Set Up an Outlook Signature

Creating or editing an Outlook signature takes only a few minutes. It becomes more challenging, however, when a single signature needs to be turned into a consistent brand image for an entire company.

After all, once several employees start using different logos, phone numbers, or outdated banners in their emails, manually updating signatures becomes an ongoing task. This is exactly where the capabilities of Outlook differ from those of a centralized solution like Lemontaps.

In this article, we'll show you how to set up a signature in Classic Outlook, New Outlook, and Outlook on the web; what information should be included in a professional email signature; and what common issues companies face when managing signatures manually. We'll also show you how Lemontaps centrally manages signatures and why this is particularly well-suited for teams, multiple locations, and different departments.

Change Outlook Signature – Classic Outlook (Desktop)

In the classic Outlook for Windows, you can edit your existing email signature directly through the Outlook Options. This menu path applies to Outlook 2016, 2019, 2021, and Microsoft 365 Desktop, among others.

How to Change Your Outlook Signature

Open Outlook on your computer.
Click "File" in the upper-left corner.
Select the "Options" option.
Click "Email" on the left.
Select "Signatures" to open the "Signatures" section in Outlook.
Under “Select a signature to edit,” choose the signature you want and customize it in the editing field.
Edit your contact information, links, images, or the design.
Click Save, and then click OK.

Figure 1: Outlook Signature in Classic Outlook

You can also create multiple signatures here—for example, a detailed signature for new emails and a shorter version for replies.

Create an Outlook Signature – New Outlook & Outlook on the Web

In the new Outlook for Windows and Outlook on the web, the layout is slightly different. You can manage your signature directly through the settings.

Create a New Signature

Open Outlook. Note: The setup process may vary slightly depending on the app or web interface.
Click the gear icon in the upper-right corner to access Settings.
Open accounts.
Select signatures.
Click "New Signature" or "Add Signature."
Enter a name for your signature.
Create your signature in the editor.
Specify whether it should be used automatically for new email messages, as well as for replies and forwards.
Save your settings.

Figure 2: Outlook Signature in Outlook Web

Figure 2: Outlook Signature in Outlook Web

Classic Outlook or New Outlook?

The basic functionality is the same in both versions. The main difference lies in the menu path.

Outlook version	Where can you find the signature?	Insert Automatically
Classic Outlook	File → Options → Email → Signatures	Yes
New Outlook	Settings → Accounts → Signatures	Yes
Outlook on the Web	Settings → Accounts → Signatures	Yes

If you don't know which version of Outlook you're using, first check whether your interface uses the classic menu bar with File → Options or the new interface with the gear icon for settings. As an email program, Outlook offers different menu paths for the same function depending on the version, such as in Microsoft 365 or Office 365 on the desktop or in the web version.

Automatically Insert an Outlook Signature

Don't want to manually add your signature to every email? Outlook can automatically add a signature to new messages, as well as to replies and forwards.

Set a Default Signature in Classic Outlook

Open File → Options → Email → Signatures.
Select the email account you want.
Under "New Messages," select your default signature.
Under "Replies/Forwarding," select the signature you want.
Click OK.

Set the default signature in the new Outlook

Open Settings → Accounts → Signatures.
Select your email account.
Select the signature you want to use for new messages.
Next, set up the signature for replies and forwardings.
Save the changes.

This will automatically apply the selected signature to your emails.

What should a professional email signature in Outlook include?

A professional email signature should make the most important information easy to find at a glance. It should complement your email and not distract from the actual content.

This information belongs in a professional signature

First and Last Name
Position or Role
Company
Phone number
E-mail address
Website
Company logo
Social Media Links
Optional: QR code for a digital business card

The key here is not to include as much information as possible. What matters is what information the recipient actually needs.

For example, a sales team can benefit from a meeting link or a digital business card. For recruiting, career pages or current job openings may be relevant. Marketing teams can promote limited-time campaigns or events via a banner in their signature.

As a result, the signature transforms from a simple contact block into a small communication channel.

Figure 3: Example of an email signature

Figure 3: Example of an email signature

What shouldn't be included in the signature?

A signature shouldn't be too large or cluttered, or it will quickly become a problem. Therefore, avoid long texts, too many links, large images, and unnecessary information whenever possible.
The following is considered best practice: A professional signature should ideally be limited to 4–6 lines.
When it comes to design, the same rule applies: Less is more. A clear structure, a consistent font, and easy-to-read text ensure that your contact information remains easy to read on both desktop computers and smartphones.
You should also avoid large images; for logos, a maximum size of 300 x 100 pixels is usually sufficient.
This enhances credibility and can even help professional email signatures reduce their spam score.

A good corporate signature should therefore be clearly structured, technically sound, and suitable for both desktop computers and smartphones.

If you want to create a professional email signature, you'll find more tips in our article “How to Create an Email Signature”.

Limitations of the Classic Outlook Signature

A manual Outlook signature works great as long as it's just one person. In a company, the situation is different.
Imagine a company with 150 employees. The corporate design is being updated, and the logo in the email signature needs to be updated as well. At the same time, a new campaign banner is to be displayed for four weeks.
With a manual solution, employees must update their signatures themselves. Some do it right away, others later. Some forget. And for some, an old version of the signature may still be on file.

The result: The same company communicates externally using several different versions of its signature. Situations like this are one of the reasons why companies manage their signatures centrally.

This is exactly where Lemontaps comes in; unlike purely manual maintenance, it offers software-based tools for consistent and more efficient management. Depending on their needs, companies are switching to centralized solutions to reduce manual maintenance and avoid errors in email signatures.

Manage Outlook Signatures Centrally with Lemontaps

Lemontaps allows you to centrally manage email signatures for teams and companies. Instead of each person creating their own signature, the company sets up templates and rules centrally.
This is particularly interesting when multiple departments, locations, or languages need to be taken into account.
For example, a company can create a central template and insert personal information such as name, position, phone number, or email address using the respective employee data.
This way, not everyone has to format their own signature.

Real-world example

A company with multiple departments would like to use different signatures:

Sales should display an appointment link and a digital business card.
Recruiting is intended to raise awareness of career opportunities.
The Marketing department would like to display a current event banner.
Management should use a simplified signature.

With centralized management, such requirements can be mapped out in templates and rules, rather than manually maintaining individual signatures for each person.

The key difference here isn't just the design. It's primarily about control and staying up to date.

For example, if an employee's phone number changes, this information can be updated centrally. If the corporate design changes, employees don't have to remember to update their signatures themselves.

Create a signature with Lemontaps

With the Lemontaps Editor, you can design a professional email signature and combine various elements. These include, among other things, contact information, images, logos, links, and a digital business card.

Open the Email Signature → Signatures section.
Create a new signature.
Enter a name for the template.
Design the signature in the editor and, if necessary, create a clearly structured text block to ensure a consistent corporate identity.
Add the desired content and links.
Save the template.
Assign the signature to the desired users or user groups.

For example, a uniform signature can be created for the entire sales team.

Figure 4: Creating an Email Signature in Lemontaps

Figure 4: Creating an Email Signature in Lemontaps

Benefits of the Signature at Lemontaps

Lemontaps also allows you to set rules for using different signatures.
For example, you can specify which signature should be used for all recipients, only for internal recipients, or only for external recipients. You can also exclude specific email addresses or domains.
In addition, signatures can be scheduled. This is particularly useful for seasonal campaigns, events, or trade shows, for example.
Another advantage of centralized management is that if the stored contact information or signature design changes, employees do not necessarily have to make the changes themselves. If needed, updates can be rolled out centrally.
Using templates and placeholders, information such as name, position, phone number, or email address can be automatically populated from the stored profile data.
This ensures that the company’s public image remains consistent and that up-to-date information can be managed centrally, while the relevant software also reduces the ongoing maintenance workload for teams.

Digital Business Card and QR Code in the Outlook Signature

An email signature can be more than just a digital version of your business card.

With Lemontaps, for example, you can include a digital business card and a QR code in your signature. This allows recipients to access additional contact information directly and save your contact details digitally. Social media icons should be placed at the end of the signature and linked directly.

This turns every email sent into an additional digital touchpoint.

This can be particularly useful for sales, marketing, recruiting, and networking. Instead of just displaying a phone number and email address, the signature can link to a more detailed digital contact page. A banner at the end of the email can also draw additional attention.

Figure 5: Digital Business Card in the Outlook Signature

Figure 5: Digital Business Card in the Outlook Signature

Learn more about digital business cards here and create one for yourself—it's completely free.

Connect Lemontaps to Outlook

For centralized management, Lemontaps is integrated with Microsoft Outlook. This is done using the corresponding Outlook add-in and is set up for the company by a Microsoft administrator.

Afterward, selected employees can use the signatures provided by Lemontaps directly in Outlook.

Here's how to use it in Outlook

The administrator sets up the Lemontaps integration for Microsoft 365.
The selected users will be granted access to their Lemontaps signatures.
Signatures and templates are managed centrally in Lemontaps.
Employees can select the templates or languages assigned to them.
The signature is used when composing a message in Outlook.

Users can select the appropriate signature from the list of assigned templates.

Important: You should not simply copy and paste a signature from another email. Depending on your version of Outlook and the formatting, this can cause display issues.

Figure 6: E-Signature in Outlook

Figure 6: E-Signature in Outlook

For detailed instructions on setting up the Lemontaps signature in Outlook, you can refer to the guide to setting up an email signature in Outlook .

Outlook Signature vs. Lemontaps

Whether a centralized solution is necessary depends primarily on the size and structure of the company.

For a single person with a simple signature, Outlook already provides everything needed. Even small teams can, in some cases, easily manage their signatures manually.

However, as the number of employees grows, the task changes: It is no longer just a matter of creating a signature, but of keeping hundreds of signatures up to date and consistent.

Function	Standard Outlook	Lemontaps
Name and Contact Information	✓	✓
Logo and Links	✓	✓
Images	✓	✓
QR code	possible	✓
Digital business card	–	✓
Centralized Team Management	limited	✓
Standardized Templates	limited	✓
User Groups	–	✓
Rules for Recipients	–	✓
Time Control	–	✓
Central Update	limited	✓
Multilingual Templates	limited	✓

In many cases, Outlook is perfectly sufficient for a single, simple signature. However, if multiple employees need to maintain a consistent image and signatures are to be managed centrally, a specialized solution offers significantly more options.

Here's a specific example:

Frisius & Partner Relys on Digital Signatures and Digital Business Cards

Lemontaps demonstrates how email signatures and digital business cards can work together effectively, usingFrisius & Partner as an example. The company is featured there as a “2-in-1 solution combining an email signature and a digital business card.”

That is precisely where an interesting difference lies compared to a traditional Outlook signature.
Email enables direct contact via the inbox. The digital business card can then provide additional information and make it easier to save contact information.
This means that not all of the information has to be included in the signature itself.
The signature remains concise, while the recipient can access the full digital profile via a link or QR code if needed.

Combining an Outlook Signature and a Digital Business Card

The SüdLeasing Use digital business cards from Lemontaps. There, employees can include their digital business card—for example, as a QR code—in their email signature. According to SüdLeasing's digital solution also reduces the administrative burden associated with physical business cards.

This highlights an important practical point: A digital business card does not have to replace an email signature. The two can complement each other.

Here's another real-world example: 400 advisors at Volksbank Kraichgau

Another example from the Lemontaps success stories illustrates why centralized digital contact information is particularly valuable for larger teams.

Volksbank Kraichgau uses Lemontaps for more than 400 advisors. Previously, traditional paper business cards required reorders whenever contact information changed, among other things. Unused leftover stock and the organizational effort involved in ordering and delivery were also cited as challenges.

With Lemontaps, contact information can be updated digitally without having to print new cards. This also makes it easier to integrate new employees into the process.

The exact same concept applies to an Outlook signature:

Contact information should not have to be manually updated in many different places.

When employee data is managed centrally, the signature and digital profile can draw on the same information.

Conclusion: Easily Change or Professionally Manage Your Outlook Signature

Creating or editing an Outlook signature is easy. In Classic Outlook, you'll find this feature under File → Options → Mail → Signatures. In the new Outlook and Outlook on the web, go to Settings → Accounts → Signatures.

For individual users, this is perfectly sufficient.

However, as soon as a large number of employees are involved, the task changes. Then it’s no longer just about creating a nice signature. It’s about ensuring that all employees use the same up-to-date company information—without each person having to maintain their own signature.

Lemontaps’ customer case studies show that this centralized approach is particularly relevant for larger organizations. Volksbank Kraichgau, for example, uses Lemontaps for more than 400 advisors and has been able to centralize the management of digital contact information. At Frisius & Partner, the digital business card is combined with the email signature, while SüdLeasing distributes the digital business card via the email signature, among other methods. This makes the Outlook signature part of a broader digital communication strategy.

With Lemontaps, you can centrally link signature templates, employee data, user groups, languages, QR codes, digital business cards, and campaigns. The signature is inserted directly into Outlook and can be kept up to date centrally.

Want to get more out of your Outlook signature? Use Lemontaps to create a professional signature for yourself or your team in just a few minutes.

Create one for free now

Frequently Asked Questions About Outlook Signatures

How do I change my signature in Outlook?

In classic Outlook, go to File → Options → Mail → Signatures. When composing a message in classic Outlook, you can also access your signature via the Insert tab. In the new Outlook and Outlook on the web, you'll find this setting under Settings → Accounts → Signatures. Then select the signature you want, edit it, and save your changes.

How do I create a new signature?

Open the signature manager in your version of Outlook and select "New Signature" or "Add Signature." Enter a name, create your signature, and save it; you can also do this in the Outlook app on mobile devices, though the available features may vary there.

Where can I find signatures in the new Outlook?

In the new Outlook, you'll find signature management under Settings → Accounts → Signatures. There, you can create new signatures, edit existing ones, and set defaults.

How do I set a signature as the default?

In the signature settings, you can specify which signature is automatically used for new messages, replies, and forwards.

What should a professional signature include?

A professional signature should include at least your name, your title, the company, and important contact information. Good reasons for this include making it easier for people to reach you, building trust, and maintaining a consistent brand image. Depending on the context, it may also be helpful to include a website, logo, social media links, or a QR code linking to your digital business card—for example, to project a professional image and make it easy for people to contact you. A minimalist design with an appropriate font further reinforces a sense of professionalism.

Can I add an image or logo to my Outlook signature?

Yes. Outlook supports images and logos in email signatures. Make sure to use an appropriate size so that the signature displays properly on mobile devices.

How to Create and Edit an Outlook Signature – Step-by-Step Guide