Outlook--Inserting a Signature in Outlook 2002

I like Microsoft Office XP's improvements in WordMail but miss the ability to insert a signature on demand. Can I get that feature back?

When you use Microsoft Word as your editor in Outlook 2000, Word stores signatures as AutoText entries. You can choose any signature with the Insert, AutoText command.

Office XP uses a different mechanism to store WordMail signatures, so you no longer see an E-mail Signature list on the AutoText menu. You can, of course, create your own AutoText entries. The easiest method is to create the formatted text that you want to use as your signature; select it; choose Insert, AutoText, New; then give the new AutoText entry a name.

You can also add this AutoText signature to your Word toolbars. The trick is that you must click in the body of the message before you choose View, Toolbars, Customize. From the Commands tab of the Customize dialog box, look under AutoText for the entry you created, then drag it to one of the toolbars.

WordMail also makes it easy to switch between signatures if you've set WordMail to insert your signature automatically and you've created more than one WordMail signature. (In Word or a WordMail message, choose Tools, Options, General, E-mail Options to access these features.) Simply right-click the signature that WordMail inserted automatically to see a list of other available signatures. For example, I have a signature named none that consists of just the "—" text that Word inserts by default. When WordMail inserts my signature on a reply but I prefer not to send a signature, I right-click the signature text and choose none, as Figure 1 shows. For me, that technique is faster than selecting the text and deleting the signature. This technique works in both Outlook 2002 and Outlook 2000.