Insert a picture and link into your email signature in Outlook Express

Inserting a picture into your email signature of Outlook Express is not as easy it should be, however it is still possible. The usual signature in Outlook Express email is made up of text. Most probably your name, address, business name, and phone number. However if you have a picture or logo to insert into your email signature then it has to be done by inserting html.

Unfortunately you cannot just put a picture into an email signature as the file size is too large. You also cannot put html files that are too large, so this is why we make a small html file that links to the picture and webpage you choose.
How to find the url of an image

1. Go to the webpage where the image is.
2. Right click on the picture and choose properties.
3. Select the URL address by making it blue and right click and choose copy.
4. Open Notepad and paste the url there.
5. Keep this notepad open for the next step.

How to write html to point to an image and make it a link
I am going to show you a basic html link that will point to a picture that is stored on the internet. So when the you send it in your email signature it will also be a link to a webpage and have text show up when the person moves their mouse over the picture.

<a href=”http://www.tips4pc.com/index.htm”><img src=”http://www.tips4pc.com/images/Untitled-1.gif” alt=”Tips4pc Logo – Free Computer Help and Education” width=”339″ height=”89″></a>

Yellow= The link.. Everything between <a and </a> is to do with the link.

Green= This is where you put the url of the webpage you want your picture to link to.

Red=  Telling us to find the image source.

Light Green= Where your image is on the net. The url you got when you found the properties of the image.

Blue= The alt tag shows writing when the mouse goes over the picture. Put your own text in between the “” and “”.

Pink= The size of the image

You can copy that exact code and just replace it with your url and image source and size. Copy from the <a to the </a>

<a href=”http://www.tips4pc.com/index.htm”><img src=”http://www.tips4pc.com/images/Untitled-1.gif” alt=”Tips4pc Logo – Free Computer Help and Tips” width=”339″ height=”89″></a>

How to make your HTML file with your picture or logo as a link

1. Paste the code from above into your notepad file.
2. Replace the url’s with your own of your choice.
3. Go to the menu at the top.
4. Choose file, Then Save as.
5. Where it says filename, choose a name.
6. I will call mine email sig.html
7. Notice how I have put .html on the end. It will be a html file now.
8. Press save and remember where you are saving it to.

How to insert your html as your signature in Outlook Express

1. Open Outlook Express
2. Go to Tools>Then  Options
3. In the Options menu, choose Signatures, then select New
4. In the Edit Signature section, if  the “Text“ selection is ticked you can write your email signature in. Or, if you would like to browse for a signature on your hard drive, you can tick the “File” selection.
5. Click on browse to find the file you want to attach.
6. To make it permanent to attach to every email, tick the box that says Add signature to all outgoing messages.
7. Now when you send an email the signature will be the picture with a link to a webpage.

Notes:

• Hopefully your email recipient has not disabled the html feature in Outlook Express or any other email client that they use.
• An ALT tag is important because if the picture in the email signature does not show up, the alt writing will still be seen.
• When you have a web page you can put your banner or logo in the email signature and people can click on it to get to website.
• You can put whatever you like in your .txt… You can put your contact details, links to websites, your email, and more…
• A html file does not take up much room because it is just a bunch of text, instructing Outlook about where to get its information from.
• If you are after a simple text signature see Creating An Email Signature for Outlook Express.
• You could put a link to your RSS feed in your signature.

Here is what my email signature looks like after I created the html file and added it to the Outlook Express email signature. It is also a link to my website.