Boilerplate Sigs in Outlook 2007
I didn’t even realize you couldn’t use more than one signature in a message in Outlook 2007. I use that feature quite often for boilerplate messages at work, but we’re still using 2003 there. Thankfully, the latest edition of WinXP News has the way to continue to do this in Outlook 2007.
How to get around the new sig line restrictions in Outlook 2007
A recent article in the Network World Security Strategy newsletter discusses one of the changes in Outlook 2007 that has some users unhappy. In past versions, you could use the signature feature to create a lot more than just sigs. You could construct boilerplate messages, for instance, and then just select them from the signatures list to insert them into messages. You might want to insert several such boilerplates into a single message (as well as your real sig line).
This doesn’t work in Outlook 2007, because suddenly you’re only allowed one sig per message. If you insert a signature, then select and insert a different one, the second one replaces the first. I actually like this feature because it prevents having to then highlight and delete the first one – but I only use signatures as signatures, not as boilerplate. I think Microsoft should have made it user configurable so you could choose whether to replace or add.
Meanwhile, you can still use boilerplate (and in my opinion, more effectively) by using Outlook 2007’s “Quick Parts” feature. Here’s how:
- Open a new message window and click the Insert tab.
- Type the text you want to set as a boilerplate in the message body and highlight it.
- Click Quick Parts in the Text section of the ribbon, and then select Save Selection to Quick Parts Gallery. Give it a name to identify it.
- Now whenever you want to insert that same block of text in any message, just click Quick Parts and choose the name you gave it. It will be inserted into your new message.
Have I mentioned how useful the newsletter is? You should definitely take a look.
