Creating a Signature
File - detailed steps, intended for those not familiar
with creation of plain text files.
_______________________________________
Preface
This page is similar to an informal discussion of some of the
factors surrounding Internet e-mail costs, and how we might be
guided in its use, especially early in the game.
This is an informal response to the those who have been inquiring
about costs for e-mail via the Internet. For those short on time, or
less interested in background and philosophy, just go to "Bottom Line Summary," below now.
For those who are interested, here is some background, etc.
Background, Philosophy
and Procedures for Internet E-mail and Other Internet Postings:
Most current arrangements for Internet services are fixed-price
arrangements which are independent of both traffic volume (number of
characters sent or received) and time spent connected to the
Internet Service Provider. The idea is to encourage communication
and interaction free from constraints which come from worrying about
associated costs (especially initial start-up costs). When volumes
are at their higher levels, then unit costs will be approaching
their lowest levels. Early in the game (1960s and 1970s) this might
have actually been an economically unsound principle in that it
substantially eliminated the need for justification of the costs.
Now however, the traffic volumes are so high and network capacities
are so large that there is not hardly any amount of individual
e-mail traffic that amounts to as much as a hill of beans. A single
graphics screen from the modest home page of one University I know
about, for example, requires more network bandwidth (network
capacity to move data) every time it is sent to a Web inquirer than
all the e-mail a typical user could generate in a month (in-bound
and outbound combined). Last I checked they were sending that page
out thousands of times every day of the week. Even back in the
mid-1990s network traffic in the U.S. alone was estimated at some 27
billion characters (900 million for Canada); and total traffic was
somewhere near 16+ trillion characters world-wide (all in a single
month). Now it is several orders of magnitude bigger, of course.
Most network links are deliberately implemented using leased
lines and other traffic-independent mechanisms precisely in order
to obtain the volumes which will result in the lowest unit costs.
That has been achieved in spades here in North America, where
costs per character are substantially zero today. And it is
because of this idea that network interaction is "free" or close
enough to "free" that you can properly think of using it
cost-effectively for nearly any purpose.
Because of these very low costs, for example, we can easily
justify using e-mail for any exchange of information with others
who are connected to the network. The actual cost of a one-page
fax, for example, is probably on the order of 20 to well over 100
times more expensive than the actual cost for an e-mail message
containing the same information. And when was the last time you
worried about the cost of a fax when compared to the value of the
immediate communication?
From an economic theory standpoint, these differences in cost
structure demonstrate very persuasively the profound disparities
between the telephone company philosophy of rigorous pricing
according to traffic volumes and pricing designed to obtain the
lowest possible unit costs. Can you imagine where we would be if
we had had to rely on measured volume pricing for this service
from the beginning?
From an information exchange standpoint, the analyses of the U.S.
military early in the DARPAnet days (Defense Advanced Research
Projects Agency Network, the predecessor of the Internet) showed
clearly that the increasing gains from increased interaction
between researchers far outweighed the increasing costs of higher
capacity lines. This finding was a milestone in U.S. military
networking philosophy. One of the early examples involved a
mailing list or newsgroup in which military researchers were
exchanging their views on different wines (or something like that)
over their DARPAnet facilities. Some of the rules-oriented guys
were a little worried that the subject matter might be seen as a
bit of a stretch for a military research network. What they
learned from the studies was that the researchers were much better
able to collaborate with their counterparts in other labs when
they knew some things about them that related to their human side.
When the network costs and the costs of time spent discussing
these wines were taken into account, the benefits in terms of
better cooperation, better teamwork, more intuitive understanding
of their colleagues, more inclination to share, etc., were seen to
clearly outweigh the minuscule costs. Today, with network unit
costs virtually collapsing, nobody even bothers to evaluate those
trade-offs any more. In terms of telephone etiquette, for example,
it is somewhat akin to speaking for a few minutes at the beginning
of a conversation about the weather, the latest fishing trip, or
the grandchildren (don't get me started!). Even though toll
charges are by the minute, we always take time to add these things
to our conversations. It makes us more effective in our work with
others; and we recognize and justify the extra costs routinely.
As you start to use Internet e-mail you need to keep a couple of
items in mind. There are others, too, no doubt. I will add them as I
learn them myself.
Use narrow-length lines. Some e-mail handlers can only
display about 60 characters in a line. Just keep the lines
shorter than the full width when you write. You will learn those
addresses where you need to be more careful of this for your
reader's convenience.
Use a "signature
file" in every e-mail message. A signature file is a block
of lines, like the example
at the bottom of this page, that identify the sender a little
more fully than just a name and an e-mail address. It contains
the kind of information that would be shown on a letterhead, if
such a thing were used with e-mail. I would not put home
telephone numbers in there, probably; but there is not much harm
in putting in a number that anybody can get from the telephone
company information service provider, or from a public telephone
book. It is also an opportunity to tell your reader a little
something you might not add to the e-mail otherwise.
A good example of the need for this further information
came in my early e-mailing days when one of my subscriptions
to a mailing list
(140 Kb) caused some grief to a mail handler in Boston. With
only my e-mail address, the guy at the other end had to
scrounge around to reach our postmaster about the
configuration of our mail handler. He found it in the
signature block on our Web page, which he also happened to
have handy. Since then I have added a phone number, etc. to my
e-mail signature file.
Another reason to include a signature file (that contains
your e-mail address) comes up when your mail is garbled, or
when the mail handler at the other end drops or fouls your
return e-mail address. In that case, the one in your signature
file saves the day. If you ever receive an e-mail message to
which you want to reply, only to find no return address, you
will appreciate this one. It is particularly frustrating if
you compose your reply and send it, only to have your message
bounce because there was something wrong with the return
e-mail address.
To make a signature file, just make up a text file on disk
and import it at the end of each e-mail message. Remember to
keep the lines short on your signature file too.
A section, Creating a
Signature File, may be found below. It contains detailed
steps, and is intended for those not familiar with creation of
plain text files.
The bottom line is that e-mail costs are substantially zero. The
benefits, on the other hand, are considerable. It is much easier to
exchange data via e-mail than via fax, for example. And the actual
costs are somewhere near 1/20th to 1/100th of the costs of fax (very
likely much less).
There are also benefits to knowing how to e-mail, developing an
address book of e-mail addresses, subscribing to helpful mailing
lists, etc. In my view it is about like the advantage of learning
to dictate over against writing things out for somebody to type.
You can say something ten to twenty times faster than you can
write. I don't think there is anybody who disputes those economies
any more.
My advice is to use the e-mail facility as often and as much as
it makes sense, and to exploit its immediate and interactive
advantage in everything you do. We have to become smarter in
everything we do; and we have to keep getting smarter continuously
in order to compete and survive. We need to take special advantage
of these technologies where costs are dropping, even though
sometimes it will look like more work initially (while we are
learning). And we have to keep in touch with our colleagues and
share the advantages of our (and their) best thinking
continuously.
There are network services called "mailing lists" which use e-mail
to circulate information to groups with common interests. It is a
very powerful and effective means to keep in touch and share your
professional and other interests. Be sure you are very conversant
with e-mail and mailing list subtleties before you subscribe to a
mailing list (140 Kb). See also our general help page for more
detail on mailing lists
(140 Kb).
The plain fact is that there is very little privacy on the Internet
that you can rely upon. And there are some fundamentally important
differences between on-line messages and either traditional mail or
telephone conversations. One of the easiest ways to think about
e-mail messages is that they are more like postcards than mail, for
example. Beyond that superficial notion are several significant
others, however. The principal notion to keep in mind is that at
every stop along the way (perhaps up to a dozen or so) the e-mail
handling software makes at least two copies of your e-mail message:
once into an input queue, and once into an output queue. If any
peculiarities arise, several other copies are also made, no doubt.
As a result of this copying alone, your e-mail and other Internet
transmissions should be viewed as public documents from the moment
you say "send." [Or
from the moment you link up to a web page, to a weblog (or blog),
a
social networking site, and the like, or to an
FTP or Gopher site, for that matter. These connections are all
logged somewhere; and the content is copied in more places than you
want to think about. See paragraph on "records"
below; and see also the "Big
Copying Hazard" section and the "by-
the-way" note (that some messages are kept for a very
long time) for additional insights and cautions.]
Keep in mind that whenever your message is seen, copied, queued,
transmitted or received, it has your name, and your employer's
name on it. The intent of the Internet is to provide equipment and
systems for the free exchange of ideas with minimal security. In
addition, if an e-mail message is undeliverable, for example, it
is returned to the sender via lots of handlers, including some of
the handlers which processed it on the way out. If it is returned
here, for example, and it was your e-mail address that was somehow
defective or garbled, then it will go to POSTMASTER for
disposition. The entire message will be there; and sometimes we
will need to see parts of the message to learn who it should be
referred to for action. If the "To" address was wrong or was
garbled, but it is a valid address, the system will deliver the
message to that party. When it gets there it will have your name
on it too. And if you inadvertently send it to a mailing list server (rather
than to an individual--something that is surprisingly easy to do),
the list server will dutifully transmit it to every one of the
(perhaps hundreds or thousands) of subscribers to the mailing
list. In such circumstances you will wish your message had been
prepared with that eventuality in mind.
The Internet is implemented as a packet-switched
store-and-forward message handling system. What this means is that
your message is broken up into packets of text, and routed to the
next station along the way. Not all the parts go via the same
intermediate stops, either. There could be dozens of stations
which handle parts or all of your message from the time you send
it until it is received. In every case, the file is written to
disk, queued and dispatched to the next handler. It is retained at
each station until an acknowledgment is received from the next
station that the message was received intact. Every one of these
files is a plain text file that anybody can read anytime. That is
the file type that all computers can handle; and it is also the
file type that is easiest to read by humans. At any time, your
message could be in lots of queues at backup time (or when a
breakdown occurs), for example. And many people keep logs of their
e-mail messages which are only purged infrequently. I found an old
e-mail log file recently, for example, which contained messages
from 1991. (!) That means it was backed up several hundred times
in that interval, at a minimum. Who knows where all those tapes
and diskettes, and whatever are or have been stored (or lost,
misplaced or stolen)?
Some observers note that encrypting e-mail messages, by the way,
keeps them private. My own view is that encryption merely alters
the length of time it takes somebody to access the contents of
your message. All these principles apply in substantially the same
ways to encrypted and unencrypted messages.
Keep in mind that a number of people are "managing" all this
on-line traffic. If your mailbox becomes full while you are away,
if you move and an e-mail message is delivered to your old
address, if there is any foul-up or breakdown in any of the
systems where your message is coming or going or en-route, all
these people will be concerned with handling these messages,
getting them to the right destinations, saving them to temporary
files while they do that, etc. Sometimes they may have to look at
the contents of a message if it appears to be a part of some big
foul up. Even if you take for granted the diligence and integrity
of these people, they are subject to the requirements of their
employers and the legal system. If you do something illegal (or
somebody thinks you did), these people may be compelled to monitor
or archive your messages. And this whole question is complicated
by the fact that these mail administrators, who handle thousands
of e-mail messages every day, and to whom it is abundantly clear
there is no privacy whatsoever in e-mail, can easily forget that
there are still people who believe that these messages are private
(or who feel they ought to be private). The fact is that there are
just about a zillion ways your messages are handled, most by
persons other than the person you intend to receive them, and that
privacy has almost nothing to do with their handling procedures.
Many mail handlers have filters or filtering systems which allow
people receiving lots of e-mail to sort their messages into
categories. This allows them to see their mail grouped by subject,
sender, etc. In order to filter in-coming mail, a mail handler has
to "read" it. These filters are usually fairly primitive, only
looking at "From:" addresses or "Subject:" lines. Others read the
entire text searching for keywords, etc. The point here is that
fragments of your messages are also found in filter queues; and
your messages can be handled (or re-directed) in part based on
their contents. Furthermore, if you misspell a key word in your
message (but it is still a proper word: just not the one you
intended), then a filter could spot that word and re-direct your
message to some file, folder, person or mailing list which is
totally incompatible with what you intended. Virtually every
mailing list server has filters which "read" the in-coming mail in
order to weed out duplicate posts, messages from persons barred
from posting to the list, spam messages, etc., and to bounce
subscription/signoff requests to the list owner, etc.
If all the above were not enough, e-mail messages (and any
electronic documents, for that matter) are very susceptible to copying by
individuals. Once these copies get to parties who are not familiar
with you personally, they tend to be treated more as public
documents than as products of an individual. If you write a
particularly interesting message, somebody might post it to a
newsgroup or mailing list without asking if you would like to
rewrite it for public consumption first. Worse, if you write
something that is not very well thought out, somebody might quote
from it and hold it (and you, and perhaps your employer) up to
ridicule, sometimes in forums you know nothing about and which can
be very widespread, and that you will never even have the
opportunity to rebut. Furthermore, most mailing lists have an
archive in which your words will be immortalized
forever. And there are independent archives routinely created
and maintained by subscribers and others which are completely
outside the care, custody and control of the list owner or any other
subscriber, some of which are not widely known. And your boss
(spouse, ex-spouse, mother-in-law, friend, foe, adversary, reporter,
stalker, or ???) can subscribe to the same mailing lists you
subscribe to, and track your every post. The point is that fragments
of your messages could be scattered around in lots of places, some
of them very
permanent, and some of them not of your doing. Furthermore, of
course, there are always a few people who like to snoop around.
The privacy implications of the long expected
lifetimes
of messages contained in archives are significant. What if
you are looking for a new job, for example, and your prospective
employer decides to collect the file of all the posts you have
made to mailing lists, newsgroups and other on-line forums? Would
it help you?
In addition to the electronic copies, of course, are paper copies
which can be made by anybody anytime they see your message. When
they print these copies, they can easily print them with fonts and
layouts that make them appear much more formal than you intended
when you composed them. And they can also revise them for their
own purposes, of course. You need to have these and other
eventualities in mind whenever you use electronic messaging of any
sort. See also the "Big
Copying Hazard" section for additional insight and caution
concerning the exchange of humor, particularly when using e-mail
or other facilities provided by your employer.
Privacy
Caution - Records (may be required by judicial process)
Records: Finally, I am no lawyer, but transmission and
receipt of e-mail messages and other Internet postings (and any
request to see a web page) results in the generation and logging of
what the legal system calls a "record." These records are subject to
rules of discovery and may be required by the judicial process in
the event of a crime (whether it involves you directly or not). Your
employer and/or your Internet service provider (or, presumably any
Internet handler along the way, in whose jurisdiction the judicial
process has the right of access to these "records," even if it does
not in your jurisdiction) who has logs of these "records" may be
compelled to archive them and to provide them to the judicial
process at any time. Think about this: it is not much of a stretch
to contemplate a court case (even one in which you are only
incidentally involved, or one in which somebody thinks you
are involved) which has profound implications for your future. What
if, for example, the zealous prosecutor hires some hack to seek out
every e-mail message you ever wrote, every post to a mailing list or
newsgroup, chat room, social networking site or blog, and every
website you ever visited? Today, for example, it would be as easy as
falling down stairs to find that information for the past few weeks.
Most mailing lists have "forever" archives in which your posts are
catalogued indefinitely. Remember, there is virtually no way to
recall a posting; and there are organizations who make it
their business to catalog and sell the names, comments and e-mail
addresses of persons who post to newsgroups and mailing lists. Many
websites have software in place now which catalogs the names, e-mail
addresses, software, equipment and Internet Service Providers of
persons who visit their websites, which pages they visited, and how
long they displayed each page. This information is used internally
for marketing studies; but selling it would not be beyond the
expected activities of many. In the future it is very likely that
this kind of information will be freely available to anybody who
wants to collect it. Any control mechanisms which are applied will
need to be applied in all jurisdictions to be effective; and it is
very easy to envision how long that will be in coming. Keep in mind
the people who have been harassed or even convicted on the basis of
personal journal or diary entries they thought would always be
private. Some of them have been wrongly convicted when their written
statements were misconstrued or used in a way totally outside their
intent. Think about what it will mean when anybody is able to access
your every post to a newsgroup, mailing list or other Internet forum
over a long period of time on subjects where you have expressed many
views. Think what a lawyer could do with that.
Impending privacy crisis: There is no doubt we are on the
road to a major privacy
crisis, world-wide. Related to the privacy issues are issues
of ownership. Once these records have been replicated and
distributed widely, ownership of the fragments becomes very murky.
When international boundaries have been crossed, murky ownership
issues become substantially more complex. Until these issues are
addressed and corrected, however, the only effective control lies in
making those records very carefully in the first instance, or in not
making them at all (and then, incidentally, in hoping somebody does
not forge your identity when they create them).
[This
latter notion, by the way, is an excellent incentive not to give
anybody your password where they might (even innocently) create
these "records" in your name, for example. ... And while we are
on an aside here, keep in mind that voice mail devices, digital
cellular phones, digitized regular telephone conversations,
digital anything (?) and increasingly even fax machines and
their transmissions create electronic "records" which are backed
up, re-directed, copied, archived, filtered, etc., and which may
thereby be accessed by the judicial process too, or used for
harassment in boundless unauthorized ways. ... A word to the
wise.]
The flip side of all this is that there are so many e-mail messages
and other Internet postings floating around, that the vast majority
get where they are going with nobody seeing any parts of them.
Nevertheless, in my view you should use e-mail for those messages which
anybody could read any time, with which you would be pleased to
have your name associated, and which could appear in the evening
paper or in a court case at any time. A small midwestern town
is reported to have an e-mail policy that says: "Don't send
e-mail or make other Internet postings that you wouldn't want to
be read by your mother, your boss, your worst enemy, or your least
favorite reporter." And finally, as some sage has said: "your
e-mail and other Internet postings will come back to
haunt you. The only question is how embarrassed you will be."
Privacy Caution -
Cookies (and some of the reasons to avoid them)
Cookies are seen as an intrusion of privacy by some on-line users
and an unnecessary risk. Since they often serve the purposes of
marketers at the expense of individuals, and since they are easy to
exclude, many experienced users set the options in their browsers to
exclude them.
See also: The Center For Democracy and Technology's Health
Information
Privacy Issues page provides interesting ideas about privacy
concerns in health-related record keeping. The Center for Democracy and Technology
is a non-profit public interest organization based in Washington,
DC. CDT's mission is to develop and advocate public policies that
advance constitutional civil liberties and democratic values in
new computer and communications technologies.
See also: The page posted by The Municipal
Research and Services Center (a Washington State non-profit)
entitled "Municipal Policies on Internet Usage and E-mail
Document Retention." The paper is reprinted there with
permission of author Isabel R. Safora, Senior Port Counsel, Port
of Seattle, from Legal Notes, MRSC Information Bulletin No. 497,
April 1997. It deals with liabilities and other contingencies
which municipal administrators need to be thinking about
concerning their e-mail policies for employees and elected
officials.
-----------------------------------------------
Dorothy and Chet Meek Voice: 780+4nn-mmmm
E-mail Address: cmeek@ocii.com
World Wide Web: http://www.gochet.ca/
A Signature file provides, as an integral part of your message, the
information a person needs to reach you if the "Reply To:" function
fails for some reason, or if the "From:" address is not included.
Believe it or not, some e-mail systems do not include the "From:"
address when a message is forwarded. Thus, if the person who
receives the forwarded message wants to reply to you as the original
sender, and you left your signature block off the message, they
can't reach you without going to the person who forwarded the
message and asking them for your e-mail address! By also giving your
correspondents your web address, you provide another means for them
to find out more about you (such as a related mailing address, or
other contact information if they need it later, for example). Four
or five lines is about the maximum for a signature file; but it can
be longer or shorter. The mail handler just looks for the file by
name, and attaches it to your out-going e-mail messages as an
option.
.
The section below provides
detailed instructions for creating your own signature file using
this one as a template. And it also indicates how to have it
included in all your out-bound messages once it has been created and
filed.
Here are the detailed steps to create a signature file. These steps
assume you have access to the Internet Explorer web browser and the
WORD text processor. We will also provide some alternate suggestions
for the general case, though they may not be complete. These steps
also assume you are not familiar with creation of plain text files.
In these steps, we will copy the sample signature file
above, and use it as a template for your new signature file.
Start with this page displayed in Internet Explorer.
Position the screen so you can see the sample signature file
immediately above. (You can click on the underscored words "sample signature file" to
cause the browser to position the file to that point.)
With the mouse,
highlight the sample signature file above. To do this, position
the pointer at the upper left of the block of words (immediately
to the left and slightly above the "---" at the left of the
first line). Then, while holding down the left mouse button,
drag the pointer to the lower right of the block (immediately to
the right of "~cmeek/"). As you do that, the block is
highlighted in a dark color. Release the left mouse button (the
block of text remains highlighted).
Position the mouse pointer to the "Edit" menu in the top left
corner of the screen. Click once.
The Edit menu drops down.
Move the mouse pointer down the list until the line "Copy --
Ctrl+C" is highlighted.
Click once. This copies the block of text to the windows
clipboard.
Follow the steps immediately below if you want to create a signature
file as a plain text file for the general case. If you are using
Exchange, skip to the section for Exchange users below.
Next, start up the WORD text processor.
Select a new document by clicking once on the blank sheet of
paper in the upper left corner.
That creates a new document which is blank, and which has the
cursor positioned at the upper left corner.
Move the mouse pointer to the "Edit" menu in the top left
corner of the screen. Click once.
The Edit menu drops down.
Move the mouse pointer down the list until the line "Paste --
Ins" is highlighted.
Click once. This copies the block of text from the windows
clip board to your new document.
The font of the block of text will be your default font for
new documents. We need to change it to a fixed-width font, such
as Courier New.
Highlight the entire block of text in the new WORD document,
either by using the procedures in step 3 above, or by
positioning the mouse pointer slightly beyond the left margin of
the block (until the pointer turns into an arrow pointing upward
to the right) and clicking three times. Either way, the block is
highlighted.
Move the mouse pointer to the "Format" menu in the top middle
of the screen. Click once.
The Format menu drops down.
Move the mouse pointer down the list until the line "Font" is
highlighted (it is usually right at the top). Click once.
The Font window appears.
Select the "Font" folder tab in the Font window.
Set the Font to "Courier New." It has two overlapping upper
case T's to the left. The "Courier" font is similar; but the
True Type fonts are a little more convenient in some contexts.
Set the Font Style to "Regular."
Set the Font Size to 10 point.
Set Underline to "(none)."
Set Color to "Auto."
Clear any "Effects" boxes which are not empty by clicking on
the box once.
Select the "Character Spacing" folder tab in the Font window.
Make sure the "Spacing:" and "Position:" boxes both indicate
"normal."
Clock "OK" to close the Font window.
That puts you back in the new document with the text block
highlighted and with the font displayed as Courier New in 10
point.
Clear the highlight by hitting the up-arrow key once. That
will also position the cursor at the upper left of the block of
text.
Save this file to the network by moving the mouse pointer to
the "File" menu in the upper left corner of the screen.
The File menu drops down.
Move the mouse pointer down the list until the line "Save As
..." is highlighted. Click once.
That opens the Save As window, with a file name of doc2.doc
(or some such), and your default directory and drive. It also
indicates "Save File as Type" set to "word document."
Set the file name to sig.txt
Set the Drive: to C:\
Set the Save File As Type: to Text Only. This is very
important. If you save it as a word document, the mail handler
will not be able to figure it out at all. If you did that by
mistake, just edit it again, and save it as a Text Only file.
Click on OK to save the file.
Save the file on your C:\ drive with the name sig.txt. That
means its pathname will be C:\sig.txt. Later, when we indicate
the location of the signature file to the mail handler, remember
that pathname. It matters not where you save the signature file.
You just have to remember its pathname so you can tell the mail
handler where to look for it.
Modify the text block by inserting your own name, phone
number, fax number, and e-mail address, etc., and making
whatever other adjustments you would like. There is some value
in making the line lengths all the same, and about 50 characters
(as in the present one).
Save the file as you go along, print it to verify it prints
as you expect, and save the final product.
The steps up to here have created your signature file as a
plain text file and stored it where you (and the mail handler)
can find it. Anytime you want to change it, just edit it in the
text processor, and store the result back where it was. The next
time the mail handler picks it up, it will pick up the new
version.
Now you need to tell the mailer that you want a signature
file appended to all your out-going messages, and where to find
it.
In your mailer look for an option to specify the pathname for
your signature file. Insert the pathname where you just stored
your signature file. The mailer will append it at the bottom of
your out-going mail.
For Exchange users, it
is not necessary to have a plain text file stored somewhere on your
hard drive or on the network. Exchange keeps the file itself. The
steps below will indicate how to insert the signature file you
copied onto the clipboard above into the right place in Exchange.
Start up Exchange.
Move the mouse pointer to the "Tools" menu at the top of the
screen. Click once.
The Tools menu drops down.
Move the mouse pointer down the list until the line
"AutoSignature ..." is highlighted.
Click once. That brings up the
AutoSignature window.
In the "Name:" box, type a name for your signature file, such
as "Sig_1." Any name will do. Exchange allows you to have
several signature files. One might be best for formal business
messages, another for informal notes to well known associates or
peers, for example. By naming them differently, you are able to
specify which one you want for each message. One of the
signature files will be the default. It will be used unless you
indicate you want a different one.
After you have typed a name, hit the tab key to move the
cursor into the "Contents:" box.
Hold down the Ctrl key. While holding the Ctrl key down, hit
the "V" key; and release both keys.
This copies the block of text from the windows clipboard into
the "Contents:" window.
The font of the block of text will be some default font. You
probably want to change it to a fixed-width font, such as
Courier New. If you do, highlight the entire block of text in
the "Contents:" box by using the procedures in step 3 in the first section
above. The block is highlighted.
Move the mouse pointer to the "Font" box (to the right).
Click once.
The Font window appears.
Set the Font to "Courier New." It has two overlapping upper
case T's to the left. The "Courier" font is similar; but the
True Type fonts are a little more convenient in some contexts.
Set the Font Style to "Regular."
Set the Font Size to 10 point.
Clear any "Effects" boxes which are not empty by clicking on
the box once.
Set Color to "Auto." If you have already selected a color for
text in your replies, that color will be displayed. You can
leave it alone, if you wish.
Set Script to "Western."
Click "OK" to apply the new font, and close the window.
Modify the text block by inserting your own name, phone
number, fax number, and e-mail address, etc., and making
whatever other adjustments you would like. There is some value
in making the line lengths all the same, and about 50 characters
(as in the present one). Make adjustments until the signature
block looks the way you want it.
Click "Set as Default." This action makes your new signature
file the current default. When you add others later, you can set
one of them as the default if you want.
Select "Add The Default Selection To The End Of Outgoing
Messages." That puts a check mark in the box to the left,
indicating that you want the new signature file (which has just
been set as the default) to be added to all of your out-going
messages.
There is another box: "Don't add selection to Replies or
Forwards," which you can also check, if you want. My preference
is to leave it un-checked. By leaving it unchecked, it means
that you want the signature file also to be appended to your
replies and to messages you are forwarding. That is a good
practice, I think, for all the same reasons you want it on other
messages.
Choose "Close."
For additional information, and for procedures to create and
insert additional AutoSignatures, select "Help" in Exchange, and
then "Microsoft Exchange Help Topics."
In the Help Topics window, select the "Index" folder tab, and
type "Signature."
In the "Topics Found" window select "Creating and Deleting an
AutoSignature."
Hit the display button. The help panel covers the steps
above, and those required for additional AutoSignatures.
You are in business. When you are finished your next message,
hit < enter> following your last line, and then send the
message. Your signature file is appended at the bottom (in the
line below the blank line where the cursor was).
Send yourself a message to test its appearance. Adjust the
AutoSignature file as needed (using the Edit button in the
AutoSignature window from step 5
above), and test again.
Title: The Meek Family Website - Help with
E-mail: Sub-section on Costs; Cautions Concerning Mailing Lists
and Privacy; Sample Signature File.Contact for further information about this
page: Chet Meek. Voice: 780+433-6577; E-mail:
cmeek@ocii.comThe primary URL for this page is at:
http://www.GoChet.ca/h_emailc.htm Page last updated: 14 September 2020 (Sm
2.33.n ff, w/SC; Win7pOn). Page
created: 10 June 1995.
Table of Contents for this page:
Mailing List Caution:
Return to the Table of Contents or the TOP of this page. 
). Page
created: 10 June 1995.