add an html email signature in mac mail
apple users may think they are missing out on having an html email signature when using mac mail. email signatures (or email signatures) provide a wonderful opportunity to include your branding in a clean and organized way. in particular, they can be a great place for a secondary cta (call to action) and other necessary email footers (ie unsubscribe and support links). your social media and other contact details may also appear here. this is something you want to have pre-built, as you don’t want to type it every time you write a new email.
We know that html email signatures are great for your brand… not true, but mac mail hasn’t made it easy to implement. here is a step by step guide to help you.
step 1. create your html email signature
Before you can create your mac mail html signature, you must first generate your html file. personally, i do this using hubspot’s email signature generator. these steps will work no matter what means you use to create your html file.
Now if you are using gmail or an email client like outlook, the following steps are simple. open the html file you created inside a web browser (i use chrome), highlight the content, then hit copy, go to the signature area of your email app window and hit paste. but for mac mail unfortunately it’s not that simple. Follow the steps below and hopefully this will make things a bit easier for you.
step 2. create email signature file in mac mail
- open mac mail
- create a new email
- click “signature” then “edit signature” dropdown
- select the inbox you want to create a signature for
- press the + button
- name the signature
- close the popup
- close mac mail completely
step 3. browse to the html email signature file
- open a browser window
- select the hd folder on your macintosh
- go to users
- select your username (if not you can see the hidden folder (folders, press cmd+shift+period. repeat this to hide them again if you want)
- open library (a hidden folder)
- then open mail
- find and open v7 (or whatever v folder is newer)
- then open maildata,
- now open signatures
- inside from this folder, there will be all your signature folders with random strings for their filename.
- locate the newest one (this is the file you created in step 1).
step 4. add html code to mac mail file
- open the signature file with a text editor (I prefer sublime text)
- leave the first 5 lines of code (the last line of code will start with mime-version – leave this all the line as is).
- delete all lines below that line.
- copy and paste your html code (from step 1)
- paste it 2 lines below the mime-version line.
- save your html code and close the file
- go back to the browser window, select the signature file you just edited and press cmd+i (get info) .
- in general, put a check on “locked”
- close this window and double check that you can see a lock on your file (if you ever need to edit your signature file, you must reverse this step to temporarily unlock the file).
step 5. see your signature in action
- well if you made it this far, congratulations!
- open mac mail
- create a new email
- if you can’t see the signature, make sure your inbox is the one you selected in step 2.
- still don’t see it? click on the signature and manually select it from the dropdown list.
- enjoy!
do you need help?
If this all seems a bit too technical, fear not! contact us at brugel creative and we can create and add an html email to your mac mail account for you.