How CodeTwo client-side signature adding options affect Outlook’s default signature settings

Problem:

You are using CodeTwo Email Signatures for Office 365 in client-side mode. After installing one of the CodeTwo Outlook Add-ins, your Outlook signatures may no longer be set as the default ones for new messages or for replies/forwards and inserted automatically when composing an email.

Solution:

The signature behavior depends on the add-in you’ve chosen and which options you’ve configured. To learn how each add-in and CodeTwo Email Signatures for Office 365 settings affect your native Outlook signatures, go to the relevant section:

• Modern CodeTwo Signatures Web Add-in for Outlook (Web Add-in)
• Classic CodeTwo Signatures Add-in for Outlook (COM Add-in)

Modern Web Add-in

Client-side signature rules created in CodeTwo Email Signatures for Office 365 control which signature is added by default in Outlook (Fig. 1.). This applies to the default signature for new messages and/or for replies and forwards. To learn more about these controls, read this article.

Fig. 1. Outlook signature adding options in the signature management app.

When a client-side signature rule is configured to add the default signature (see Fig. 1.), that signature will be inserted automatically into email, and the native signatures will be disabled in the Signatures and Stationery window in Outlook - the default signature for new messages and/or for replies and forwards in Outlook will be set to none (Fig. 2.).

Fig. 2. Web Add-in has disabled native signatures – no default signature is set in Outlook.

If no rule is set up to add the default signature, the configuration of the native Outlook signatures will not be changed (Fig. 3.). Also, no signature will be inserted automatically – the user will have to choose a signature manually from the add-in pane.

Fig. 3. No rule to insert the default signature – no changes to the native signatures’ configuration.

Advanced options for the modern Web Add-in

The settings configured in the Logic step of a rule (see Fig. 1.) apply only to the users who’ve been added as senders to that rule. However, with the modern Web Add-in, an admin can also centrally disable native Outlook signatures for all users for whom the add-in was deployed. Consequently, the setting will be applied both to users who get client-side signatures in Outlook and who use the add-in to preview server-side signatures in Outlook. To do so, an admin needs to enable the Always disable end users’ default signatures in Outlook option in the CodeTwo Admin Panel (Fig. 4.). See this video or go to the user's manual to learn more about this and other advanced options available for the Web Add-in.

Fig. 4. Disabling native signatures globally.

Once the option is enabled, the default signatures in Outlooks of the users in question will be set to none – similar to what’s shown in Fig. 2. As a result, their emails will always get only these signatures which were configured in CodeTwo Email Signatures for Office 365.

Classic COM Add-in

Similar to the modern Web Add-in, client-side signature rules created in CodeTwo Email Signatures for Office 365 control which signature is added by default in Outlook (see Fig. 1.). This applies to the default signature for new messages and/or for replies and forwards. To learn more about these controls, read this article.

When a client-side signature rule is configured to add the default signature, this signature will also be set as the default one in the Signatures and Stationery window in Outlook, and will be inserted automatically into emails (Fig. 5.).

Fig. 5. Default signatures set in Outlook.

Even if none of your client-side signature rules is configured to add a default signature (as shown in Fig. 6.), the CodeTwo add-in still controls the default signature settings in Outlook.

Fig. 6. The signature added based on this signature rule will not be set as the default one in Outlook.

In this case, the default signature for new messages and/or for replies and forwards in Outlook is set to none. This means no signature will be inserted automatically when composing an email in Outlook (Fig. 7.).

Fig. 7. No default signature is set in Outlook.

If a user changes any of the default signature settings in the Signatures and Stationery window in Outlook, this change will remain in place until the CodeTwo Signatures Add-in for Outlook is synchronized. During the next synchronization (which occurs automatically), our add-in will display the Outlook restart required message, as shown in Fig. 8. When Outlook is restarted, the default signature settings will be overwritten and changed back to the values set in the signature management app. This will continue as long as the user is signed in to the add-in.

Fig. 8. The CodeTwo Signatures Add-in for Outlook detected that some settings have been changed, and Outlook needs to be restarted.