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Beginning after the separator, we type the text of our signature. For a plain text signature that is all. If we want to apply various formats to our text we can make use of HTML editing. HTML editing is turned on with the leftmost button. Then you can use all the other formatting buttons to give your text some style.

While this may look very cool to you, it can look very uncool to someone using an email client incapable of displaying HTML. This is not as unlikely as you may think, and there are people who reject anything but plain text in their email (they don't have that many problems with worms and viruses either). That's why it is a good idea to have one signature text in two formats.

Set up one signature called "work" in plain text, for example. Then create another signature and call it "work (html)". The text is the same as with the signature called "work", but you add the HTML formatting you like. Whenever you create an email message, you can choose between the two formats, depending on the recipient, her email client's capabilities and her preferences.

Default Signatures

In Outlook Express, we can create as many signatures as we like. To select one of them when sending a message, we use the "Signature" button in the message composition window's toolbar.

You will find that, whenever you send a message from your work email account you select the signature called "work". Often, when you send a message from your personal email account, you use the "perso" signature. Outlook Express can save you the work of selecting these signatures.

We can specify default signatures for email accounts. This takes place in the "Accounts" window (reached by selecting "Tools | Accounts"). To specify a default signature, we click on the email account and then on "Edit". The "Edit Account" window opens. On the "Options" tab, the first option already is to specify the default signature. Here, we can select the signature we want Outlook Express to append by default. Of course, we can also specify to have no signature at all by default.

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Randomizer

You, as creative as ever, may not have only one, but many witty, intelligent quotes. You, as observant as ever, have probably wondered what "Random" is for in the "Signatures" window of Outlook Express.

Besides the "special" signature "None" that you can specify as a default for an email account (with the effect of no signature appended by default) there is another special signature: "Random". If the latter is selected, Outlook Express will select a random signature from all those marked as "Random". Unfortunately, there can only be one pool of random signatures.

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