Hey everyone! We've just migrated to Exchange Online and are using the M365 monthly channel, which has been great. I've noticed that Outlook (classic) mentions that it's now roaming signatures, which is fantastic since it saves us some hassle. However, I'm facing an issue with new user profiles where the roaming signatures don't always appear as they should. Sometimes, it takes several restarts of Outlook, or technicians end up manually copying them in. On the other hand, Outlook (new) seems to work perfectly, as the signatures show up right after creating the profile. Has anyone else encountered this? Any insights would be appreciated, especially since we're planning a mass migration to Windows 11 soon, where we'll be wiping machines and starting fresh.
4 Answers
We use Exclaimer for a standardized signature for everyone. It pulls user information like contact details and job titles from their Exchange profile. I set it up when I was an apprentice, so it’s not too complicated to implement, especially with Azure Sync through Active Directory.
Make sure your users are only using one signature, specifically the 'online' version. If there's a local version still around, it won't be sent by default.
I think this is a design flaw in Outlook Classic. Running Procmon when you first launch Outlook shows it's trying to access the Signatures directory in AppData but fails because it hasn't been created yet. We pre-create this directory in the default user profile during Autopilot, and it helps signatures roam correctly every time, although it can take a few seconds after Outlook's first run to get right. Here’s the path: C:UsersDefaultAppDataRoamingMicrosoftSignatures. I heard from the product group that they don't plan to fix this for the classic version.
From what I remember, to manage signatures without requiring users to copy/paste settings from a template, it’s best to use a third-party add-on like Signitic. It makes life a lot easier!
We actually use Templify for that purpose. It works well for us!
It's a bit frustrating that Microsoft still doesn't provide a public API for setting user signatures. It forces us to rely on third-party tools.