Microsoft Outlook is one of the most popular email clients on the planet which has a lot of powerful features. However, if you’re trying to automatically add an email signature to outgoing calendar meeting requests (or appointments) you will be shocked to hear this…
It’s not possible.
That’sΒ right, Outlook doesn’t actually have this feature available out of the box.
So, what can I do?
The only way to get an email signature to be automatically appended to an Outlook meeting invite is to create a new custom form and use that form whenever you send out meeting invitations.
Here’s how to automatically insert email signatures to meeting invites
These steps work on Outlook versions 2013 – 2019. However, some older versions of Outlook also support this method, but the steps might be slightly different.
Step 1:
Firstly, you will want to open Outlook and go to File > Options > Click on Customize Ribbon from the left menu.
On the right, under the “Customize the Ribbon” section, tick the box that says “Developer” to enable the developer tools.
Click OK.
Step 2:
Next, go to your Calendar view and click on “New Meeting” in the top ribbon.
In the New Meeting window, click on the Insert tab.
Click on the Signature button and select the signature you want to insert.
Step 3:
Next, click on the Developer tab in the top ribbon and then click “Design This Form”.
On the new window that has popped out, click on Publish > Publish Form As.
Enter a display name for the custom form, eg “Meeting Invite” and click Publish
Step 4:
Close the new meeting window.
You will be asked if you want to save your changes to the current meeting invite, click “No”.
Step 5:
To use your new custom form, go to your calendar view, and in the top ribbon click on New Items > Custom Forms > Click on your saved custom form.
This will open a new meeting invitation with your email signature automatically appended to it.
Great instructions. Is there a way to add the new form somewhere on the ribbon (like a macro button) so that the user doesn’t need to click 3 times in the “New Items” to get to the form? In other words, click only once? Thank you.
Hi John,
Great question! I cannot find a way to do it “easily” in Outlook, which is a bit of a shame. Maybe someone else can suggest a way to do it. I have tried going to Options and Customize Ribbon and adding a new Group etc, but that doesn’t cut down the number of clicks to get to the form. It seems like you can add the “Choose Form” part, but not the actual form itself.
I did find this resource below which recommends creating a Macro that opens the form for you, and then adding that macro in the customize ribbon section in options as a button. It is for Outlook 2010, but I think it will probably work with newer versions too. Have a read at the link below and I think you should be able to get it working.
https://social.msdn.microsoft.com/Forums/office/en-US/7403416c-2bfc-4aca-96b3-aae91e7dcf15/create-ribbon-button-to-open-custom-form?forum=outlookdev
Hi Gordan,
Thanks for the wonderful hack. To John’s question, YES there’s a way.
1) Go To Calendar View, and you’ll see “My Calendars”
2) Right click on this and go to “Properties”
3) On the “General” tab, you’ll see an option of “When posting to this folder, use” with a drop-down
4) Click on the drop-down and you’ll see the custom form you created (in my case “Meeting Invite”).
5) Select it and Ok.
The next time you click on the New Meeting, the “Meeting Invite” will be selected by default.
Hope this works. π
This is a very good solution! Thanks Rajesh.
Thank you, I have been so annoyed with not having an automatic signature like and you two have solved it for me, thank you!!!
This was very helpful; thank you!
Once you’ve created your Custom Form, Right-Click and select Add Gallery to Quick Access Toolbar and that’ll place a button at the very top left of the page, above File Home etc. It makes for slightly easier navigation to the Custom Form.
Hi Paul,
Thanks for the tip π
This has blown my mind! Thank you for publishing! Why this is not a standard feature I will never understand!
Amazing!!!!!!
You’re welcome, Steve. Glad you enjoyed the article π
Agree that this has blown my mind as well. Rarely do not one but two sets of tech instructions work the first time through with little hunting and pecking around. Thank you both for this. Made my work life easier. π
Thank you for this information. It really help π
Great Help!! Thank You!! I wish all of the little aggravations with software had quick access to a great solution. I appreciate both sets of instructions!! π
Great instructional video, I’ve wanted to do this for years. I’m having an issue though that I hope you can help with. Everything seems to work except that my signature includes my company logo and when when I open the new invite the image isn’t shown. The image file is still there under my signature and if I click where I’d expect it to be I see the outline and can right click like a normal picture file. Is there another setting to allow for images?
Thanks
Hi John,
Glad it helped you out. It sounds like Outlook is not downloading the image in your meeting invite. I can think of a couple of reasons:
1. Image downloading is being blocked by Outlook. Please see the following link which shows how to allow images to be downloaded in HTML message: https://blog.gimm.io/how-to-fix-images-not-downloading-automatically-in-outlook/
2. Possibly an anti-virus software blocking the download of images. May need to check with the software to see if you can allow image download.
Does the image show up when viewing the meeting invite in the sent items?
Hope this helps.
This was extremely helpful, thanks all!
Once I have created the calendar invite with my signature, how do I edit it?
Hi Lucy,
Basically, you would need to edit your signature under Options, and then follow the process again from step 2 in order to create a new form for meeting invites.
I am also having trouble adding auto-signature to my calendar events. However, I am using Office 365.
Can someone let me know what to do?
Thanks guys it helped me a lot