How to fix the problem with an Outlook signature displayed above your message

Problem:

An email signature is inserted (manually/automatically) above your message in Outlook for Windows.

Solution:

Such a situation might happen if you’ve edited your new message or prepared your Outlook message template (OFT) in the following way:

1. You click the New Email button and Outlook (or a third-party email signature software) automatically inserts a signature you defined as the default one for new messages.
2. Due to a bug in Microsoft Outlook, two additional blank lines are automatically added to the inserted signature, just below its visible elements, as shown in Fig. 1.

Fig. 1. Two blank lines below the inserted signature.

3. You want to start creating your email (or template) from scratch, so you remove the signature but you fail to remove the two blank lines below the signature. Consequently, the invisible part of the signature stays in the email body.
4. You start composing your new email or template (in case of the template, you eventually save it as the .oft file for a later use).
5. Next, when you:
   1. manually insert a new signature into your new email, or
   2. open the template,

   Outlook (or a third-party signature software) detects the invisible part of the old signature in the first line of your message and inserts the new signature there. Consequently, the signature appears above the contents of your message – see Fig. 2.

Fig. 2. The signature has been incorrectly inserted on top of an email.

To fix your problem, select and delete everything that’s above the contents of your message. In the example above, the very first line of your message should start from Dear customer, as shown in Fig. 3. Next:

• for a new email, insert your signature once again. Now, your signature should appear in the correct place – below your message.
• for an OFT template, save your template once again. Now, next time you use the template, your signature should be inserted by Outlook / a third-party signature software in the correct place.

Fig. 3. The blank lines have been removed and the signature is inserted in the correct place.

See also:

• Changing signature in Outlook overwrites email content