Outlook 2003 - Use an Action Email Script for Your Email Signature

Outlook 2003 - Use an Action Email Script for Your Email Signature

Email signatures have in become an art in of itself. People from business people to artists are looking to make their email notifications stand out to their end user.  Why not use an email action signature?  What’s that you say?  Whats an Action Email Signature? It’s simply a way to automate the way your contact info displays to the end user as the email is opened.  The contact info is programmatically rolled out across the screen, from the left, right, top or bottom, depending on how the code is changed.  

What does an Email Signature contain?

An Email Signature usually contains essential info for others to contact you, such as name, fax, mobile, email address.  

What’s the Difference between an Email Signature and an Action Email Signature?

As far as content they are the same.  The difference is that the Action Email Signature can be formatted to different colors and moves/flies/slides in from the side top or bottom, which gives it a dynamic appeal.  Try it!

My Email is already setup; will this disrupt my current Email Signature?

You can easily make changes to your email signatures without disrupting your current settings.  When you make a signature, Outlook allows you create various instances and you can simply click on that instance that will allow it be the current settings, it’s really that simple.

I want to use at work, I only have access to my local computer.

Perfect, this works from your local or from the server.  See below for more details.

Can this be used on Outlook 2007?

Yes, but modification needs to be made, as changes were made between the two applications. See the links below for more details.  I have not tried it on Outlook 2010.

http://www.office-outlook.com/outlook-forum/index.php?t=msg&th=97334/

http://risingline.com/blog/custom-html-email-signatures-for-outlook-2007.php

About the code:

When the user opens the email, it triggers an event that starts the action email.  With short messages the user will see the contact info slide in from the top, bottom, left, or right.  Please note: If the email trail is too long the action email still occurs, but by the time the user scrolls to the bottom of your nested email, the exercise will be complete.

--The code is set to go, all you need to is add your personal info.  Simply change the highlight name to your own.

--By changing the scroll amount from 1 to 6, to can change the speed, you may be able to go above 6, you will have to experiment.

--You can change the direction, from which the text enters, by changing the highlighted to left, right, down, top:

--You can customize the script by changing the height and width of each section;

--You can alter how many times the text enters the page by altering the loop, it can enter and repeat how many times you want; this is set to enter only once:

--This is actually a real cool trick, so that you can create the look and feel of random as each line appears at different times. The ScrollDelay will wait x seconds before it unleashes the text to scroll across the screen, make sure you change the ScrollDelay for each section, it will have a pleasant effect!

--You can alter font, color, and size:

¿Continue through and change the rest of the sections with generic contact info, and settings as you see fit:

--Add custom image/banner to your Action Email Sig:

This is a really cool part at the end of the code.  You can add an image that will fly in.  This can be a company logo, initials, and personal signature, anything you want.  I recommend downloading the trial version of Photoshop or Fireworks to create a custom banner for the bottom of your sig. Or use a current one.  Again as you can see, all the settings can be customized

If you want an image from a local drive, simply swap out the highlighted and insert the path to your image on your local host. Similar to: “C:/mycomp/image.gif”.  Make sure that the slashes are going in the right direction.

The code uses Marquees: <Marquee></Marquee>, so if you use on your local computer, it will be seen by internal people and at times external people outside of your network will not always be able to see the images/banner if you provide any.  No worries, if you are at work you don’t have to include an image at the bottom of your signature. Otherwise, if you want 100% certainty the image/banner can be seen by the world, place the html and image/banner on the email server if you have admin access. The basic gist on Marquees: Use them, but don’t rely on them.

Steps to Implement(Please see attachment with screenshots):

1)      Copy code to your local machine and make appropriate changes.  I usually make a separate folder to store all my different layouts of signatures. Make sure you remember what directory you put it at, and make sure the extension is “.html”.  So I have used the following naming conventions: “C:/Action_Email/MySig.html”

2)      Now we need to create a new instance in Outlook:

3)      At the top in Outlook 2003 go to Tools > Options >

4)      In the Options Box select Mail Format:

5)      Now make sure that the Message Format is set to HTML and click the button that says “Signatures…”

6)      In the Create Signature box, click New:

7)      Click “add” and add a custom email and find the path to where your action signature is stored on your local host.

8)      Click the radio button that’s says” Use this file as template” (disregard what’s selected below, it’s incorrect) and click Browse… and find where your action sig is located on your local disk.

9)      You should see your signature in the Preview. Name your new signature and click finish/Ok

Other Helpful Articles:

“How to Create an Email Signature in Outlook”, http://email.about.com/od/outlooktips/ss/Create_Email_Signature_Outlook_4.htm

Download Free 30 day Trial of Fireworks to create custom images, https://www.adobe.com/cfusion/tdrc/index.cfm?product=fireworks

Fireworks Tutorial: http://www.jcsu.edu/news/printshop/tutorials/fireworks/fw_tutorial.pdf

Marquee Tag in HTML: http://html.com/tags/marquee/

 Email-sig.docx

<!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.0 Transitional//EN">
<HTML><HEAD>
<META http-equiv=Content-Type content="text/html; charset=iso-8859-1">
<META content="MSHTML 6.00.2800.1505" name=GENERATOR></HEAD>
<BODY>
<DIV>&nbsp;</DIV>
<DIV>&nbsp;</DIV>
<DIV>
<MARQUEE id=Marquee2 style="WIDTH: 300px; HEIGHT: 40px" trueSpeed scrollAmount=1 
scrollDelay=40 direction=down behavior=slide loop=1 border="0"><STRONG><FONT 
face=Verdana color=#0000ff size=2>John J. Smith</FONT></STRONG></MARQUEE></DIV>
<DIV>
<MARQUEE id=Marquee2 style="WIDTH: 300px; HEIGHT: 17px" trueSpeed scrollAmount=1 
scrollDelay=40 direction=down behavior=slide loop=1 border="0"><STRONG><FONT 
face=Verdana color=#0000ff size=1>VP Marketing and Sales 
</FONT></STRONG></MARQUEE></DIV><FONT 
face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif">
<DIV>
<TABLE>
  <TBODY>
  <TR>
    <TD>
      <MARQUEE id=Marquee3 style="FONT-SIZE: 10pt; WIDTH: 200px; HEIGHT: 12px" 
      trueSpeed scrollAmount=2 scrollDelay=3 behavior=slide loop=1 
      border="0"><FONT color=#000066 size=1>Tel: 1-800-444-1234 
      X43444</FONT></MARQUEE></TD></TR>
  <TR>
  <TR>
    <TD>
      <MARQUEE id=Marquee3 style="FONT-SIZE: 10pt; WIDTH: 200px; HEIGHT: 12px" 
      trueSpeed scrollAmount=1 scrollDelay=4 behavior=slide loop=1 
      border="0"><FONT color=#000066 size=1>Direct: 
    212-234-5444</FONT></MARQUEE></TD></TR>
  <TR>
  <TR>
    <TD>
      <MARQUEE id=Marquee3 style="FONT-SIZE: 10pt; WIDTH: 200px; HEIGHT: 12px" 
      trueSpeed scrollAmount=1 scrollDelay=5 behavior=slide loop=1 
      border="0"><FONT color=#000066 size=1>Fax: 
  212-234-3578</FONT></MARQUEE></TD></TR>
  <TR>
    <TD>
      <MARQUEE id=Marquee3 style="FONT-SIZE: 9pt; WIDTH: 275px; HEIGHT: 12px" 
      trueSpeed scrollAmount=2 scrollDelay=5 behavior=slide loop=1 
      border="0"><FONT color=#000066 size=1>e-mail: john.smith@mycomp.com </FONT></MARQUEE></TD></TR></TBODY></TABLE></DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial size=2></FONT>&nbsp;</DIV>
<DIV>
<MARQUEE id=Marquee5 style="FONT-SIZE: 10pt; WIDTH: 300px; HEIGHT: 12px" 
trueSpeed scrollAmount=2 scrollDelay=4 direction=right behavior=slide loop=1 
border="0">
<DIV><I><STRONG>&nbsp;</DIV>
<DIV><I><IMG height=58 alt="myComp" 
src="http://mycomp/images/email_logo.gif" width=180 < img 
NOSEND="1"></FONT></DIV></I></STRONG></I></MARQUEE></DIV></FONT></FONT>
<P></P>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial size=2></FONT>&nbsp;</DIV>
<DIV>&nbsp;</DIV>
<DIV>&nbsp;</DIV>
<DIV>&nbsp;</DIV>
<DIV>&nbsp;</DIV>
<DIV>&nbsp;</DIV></BODY></HTML>