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mfacey

macrumors 65816
Original poster
Feb 1, 2004
1,230
9
Netherlands
I'm trying to put a small image into one of my standard signatures for outgoing mail. In the Mail.app pref pane this works fine. Just drag the image into the field and its there. However, when I send an email with the signature at the bottom, the image is just received as an attachment. Is there a way to "embed" the image into the signature and subsequently the email? The image is a 60kb jpg image by the way.

Thanks!
 

TBi

macrumors 68030
Jul 26, 2005
2,583
6
Ireland
If you make your mail HTML it should work. However depending on how the other person has their mail set up they might not see it.
 

mfacey

macrumors 65816
Original poster
Feb 1, 2004
1,230
9
Netherlands
I though that was the issue, yes. However I can't find where to change the outgoing email format to HTML. I currently have it set to RTF and the only other option in the Mail.app prefs is Plain text. Shouldn't it work under RTF though?
 

kenif

macrumors newbie
Feb 7, 2008
4
0
Images in Mail

I'm pretty sure this cannot be done.
It's rich text, not html, so does not support absolute images, the normal way to do this. If you enter an html line such as:

<img src="http://mysite.com/images/mypic.png" />

all that happens is that the link works, it won't load the picture.

To send html use Thunderbird or a similar client that supports html.
 

kenif

macrumors newbie
Feb 7, 2008
4
0
images in Mail

You can drag a small gif or jpg into the signature box but there is no guarantee the receiving mail client will display embedded.
 

kkat69

macrumors 68020
Aug 30, 2007
2,013
1
Atlanta, Ga
From my experience in this, it seems like it depends on the mail client.

I did a signature with a graphic in Pages, then copied and pasted it and this was what I got (it essentially sent as PDF attachment)

iMail - showed up fine as long as mail was Rich Text
Outlook - attachment
WebMail (comcast) - attachment

I then did just an image and text (wasn't pretty but it had the image)

iMail - showed up fine
Outlook - showed up fine
WebMail (comcast) - attachment

So I basically said heck with it, instead of letting the copy and paste turn my clipping into PDF I screenshot it and just sent my signature as image. Since I haven't found a way to attach both kinds since iMail's signature ability isn't like Outlooks I just told people 'deal with it' lol... j/k.

Seriously, creating a pretty sig then I screenshot it. and left it at that.
 

JNB

macrumors 604
.
 

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fourcolourblack

macrumors member
Jun 22, 2008
58
0
Edinburgh, Scotland
I realise this is well dead as far as threads go now, but if anyone stumbles across this… this has worked for me.

Create the sig in any html programme (lets say dreamweaver). Upload this somewhere.

Go to that page in Safari, FILE > MAIL CONTENTS OF THIS PAGE.

This will insert that page into a new email window within Mail.

Feel free to add your regular sig information after/before/whereever this.

Of course it does depend on the person you are sending it to but does load in gmail, hotmail, entourage, Mail etc etc and not as an attachment.
 

trblshtr

macrumors newbie
Jun 25, 2009
1
0
mac mail

OK - I work on a MAC and use the "mail" program, everyone else in my office uses outlook on PCs. I am TRYING to create a signature that looks aesthetically pleasing and matches our branding...ie

Sincerely,
Name

logo logo
url url

address and whatnot
more copy

....now, my problem is this...the image, whether a png, whatever, keeps showing up in outlook at an attachment. Does anyone know how I can make this work? Or is this an impossible fete?

Thank you!!!
 

miles01110

macrumors Core
Jul 24, 2006
19,260
36
The Ivory Tower (I'm not coming down)
OK - I work on a MAC and use the "mail" program, everyone else in my office uses outlook on PCs. I am TRYING to create a signature that looks aesthetically pleasing and matches our branding...ie

....now, my problem is this...the image, whether a png, whatever, keeps showing up in outlook at an attachment. Does anyone know how I can make this work? Or is this an impossible fete?

The only way to "guarantee" a signature that will show up relatively the same across mail clients is to use plain text. Images, HTML, and attachments are extremely fussy between Mail clients, and it depends on what the receiver has their client set up for- not how you send it. That's why people who spend a lot of time making a nice HTML signature are wasting their time.
 

fourcolourblack

macrumors member
Jun 22, 2008
58
0
Edinburgh, Scotland
Ok, I've just about given up on this one. I'm sure uploading the signature somewhere online and doing a "mail contents of this page" works though.

Although in some different mail clients it has shown up as an attachement. Go figure, perhaps its more down to the way the page with the image is setup in the first place.

I don't know enough about ding html emails, but I'm sure there's someone out there who can explain how the images in those load without being attachments.
 

miles01110

macrumors Core
Jul 24, 2006
19,260
36
The Ivory Tower (I'm not coming down)
I don't know enough about ding html emails, but I'm sure there's someone out there who can explain how the images in those load without being attachments.

It's already been explained more or less; the person receiving the html mail has their client configured to display html. If they dont it either shows up as an attachment or a raw html document.

btw: I believe all of those clients you mentioned have HTML "on" as default...
 

kenif

macrumors newbie
Feb 7, 2008
4
0
OK - I work on a MAC and use the "mail" program, everyone else in my office uses outlook on PCs. I am TRYING to create a signature that looks aesthetically pleasing and matches our branding...ie

Sincerely,
Name

logo logo
url url

address and whatnot
more copy

....now, my problem is this...the image, whether a png, whatever, keeps showing up in outlook at an attachment. Does anyone know how I can make this work? Or is this an impossible fete?

Thank you!!!

Yes: couple of ways.
1) Use Thunderbird or a bulk emailer such as Mailings, insert html that includes absolute images.
2) Create your email as a webpage, host it somewhere, open in Safari and send contents.

The first solution is the easiest.
Host your image somewhere. That means you can view the image on its own with a browser and the address starts with http. There are several free image hosting sites.

Create an e-mail template in an HTML editor and save it locally. Kompozer is free and the latest 0.8 is usable. Insert your image into the HTML.
Piss with it until it looks good. You can insert columns and colors like the example below. There are lots of free e-mail templates out there.

When you're happy with the finished page, copy the raw HTML code and paste it into the insert HTML field in Thunderbird. Hit send and your e-mail will look much better than their crappy Outlook POS e-mails.

I send out hundreds of emails on a Mac with up to a dozen images - example:
http://spacecoastredcross.com/newsletter/archive/chatter72.html

As far as I know this cannot be done using the current Mac Mail.
Let's see what Snowy has in store.
 

fourcolourblack

macrumors member
Jun 22, 2008
58
0
Edinburgh, Scotland
I'II have to try that one out. Its a shame Apple haven't developed a html pane for Mail. I'm really not a fan of Thunderbird, and don't want to start using it. Nor open it for sending signatured emails… what a complete faff this all is for something PCs actually quite scarily do better.
 

miles01110

macrumors Core
Jul 24, 2006
19,260
36
The Ivory Tower (I'm not coming down)
I'II have to try that one out. Its a shame Apple haven't developed a html pane for Mail. I'm really not a fan of Thunderbird, and don't want to start using it. Nor open it for sending signatured emails… what a complete faff this all is for something PCs actually quite scarily do better.

What are you talking about? Mail displays HTML messages just fine. People still don't seem to understand that anyone can turn off HTML and inline images and only display messages as plain text with attachments, and there's nothing you can do about it. It has nothing to do with Windows or OS X.
 

fourcolourblack

macrumors member
Jun 22, 2008
58
0
Edinburgh, Scotland
What are you talking about? Mail displays HTML messages just fine. People still don't seem to understand that anyone can turn off HTML and inline images and only display messages as plain text with attachments, and there's nothing you can do about it. It has nothing to do with Windows or OS X.

Hmm. I don't get you. I receive emails everyday from two different clients, one whose image appears in the signature seamlessly, and one as an attachment. They can't turn if off as its part of their companies message or whatever, and when the one whose image appears as an attachment replies I get 2 attachments.

Its obviously got nothing to do with how I have my mac setup, but how their emails are built. All 'proper' html emails display fine of course.
 

austita4

macrumors newbie
Nov 1, 2011
1
0
This Worked for me....

I haven't read through everybody's replies and not sure if anyone has come up with this, but all I did was drag the images I wanted from my desktop into my signature box and it worked. It would;t let me upload photos, take screen shots, but this actually worked for me!:)
 
Nov 28, 2010
22,670
30
located
I haven't read through everybody's replies and not sure if anyone has come up with this, but all I did was drag the images I wanted from my desktop into my signature box and it worked. It would;t let me upload photos, take screen shots, but this actually worked for me!:)

Since this thread is two years old, maybe also state what Mac OS X and Mail version you use, as the same principle might not apply to older/newer versions of Mail.

Btw, how did you come upon this thread, to register here and reply to it, as you already had an answer? Do you look for them?
 

rockit99

macrumors newbie
Dec 3, 2009
2
0
In London, England
Update for Mail signatures in 10.7 Lion

The Signatures folder in Mail is in a different place in Lion.

First you can make the user Library visible by selecting 'Go to Folder' in the Finder Go menu and type in (without quotes) '~/Library/'

Or navigate directly to the new Signatures folder location at:
~/Library/Mail/V2/MailData/Signatures

You can then follow the instructions as outlined:
Link removed by Mod: no longer goes where it should: now spam
 
Last edited by a moderator:

swbusiness

macrumors newbie
Aug 8, 2011
12
0
I haven't read through everybody's replies and not sure if anyone has come up with this, but all I did was drag the images I wanted from my desktop into my signature box and it worked. It would;t let me upload photos, take screen shots, but this actually worked for me!:)

Thanks - that is what I was looking for
 

jlc1978

macrumors 603
Aug 14, 2009
5,431
4,183
If you make your mail HTML it should work. However depending on how the other person has their mail set up they might not see it.

Even worse, some mail serves will not deliver mail with embedded graphics due to security restrictions set by the administrator. I had a client not getting emails because of a jpg in my signature; their server automatically trashed such emails.
 

James_C

macrumors 68030
Sep 13, 2002
2,814
1,818
Bristol, UK
I have to be honest, people putting logo's and other graphics into email signatures is a pet hate of mine. I wish people would just stick to text. Every time I get an email with these graphics, Mail shows that something is attached, which I then need to check to see if it is something important.

If you really, really need to have this kind of stuff in your email signature then I suggest you do this instead.

1. Copy the image to some public space on the internet. By public space, I mean a something like Dropbox or some place on your server where an http:// address can be created that is visible to all.

1. Create an image block in your signature. It might look like this:

<img src="http://yourserveraddress/sig.png" alt="Signature" width="32" height=""32" />

Of course, replace the http address with your file, fill in a better alt tag, and set the height and width you want.
 

smithrh

macrumors 68030
Feb 28, 2009
2,722
1,730
For the longest time (and I mean a LONG time, been sending email since the 80s), I absolutely despised anything other than plain ole ASCII text for email.

I would actively seek out the settings in whatever email program I had and make it so that it wouldn't send out anything other than ASCII. No fancy crap whatsoever. Z-mail, Netscape Mail, Outlook, you name it. I'd also go hunt down people who would attach big files (100kb! LOL) to emails and tell them to go put it on a server and to send the link to the server instead.

But times have changed. We've got better standards now, and networking and compute horsepower are basically off the rails compared to back then.

Somehow, though, even though Apple started the WYSIWYG revolution, Mail.app carries at least some of the same types of thought patterns I once did, and there are really simple things that other email apps do that Mail.app doesn't.

I still tend towards simplicity with email, don't get me wrong. But in the corporate world, having (and establishing) a brand is important for a lot of people and email is a big way of doing that. All we're talking about is having the equivalent of letterhead for email, and again it's curious as to why Mail.app doesn't support that, Apple being who they are.
 

storygems

macrumors newbie
Mar 27, 2012
1
0
The Signatures folder in Mail is in a different place in Lion.

First you can make the user Library visible by selecting 'Go to Folder' in the Finder Go menu and type in (without quotes) '~/Library/'

Or navigate directly to the new Signatures folder location at:
~/Library/Mail/V2/MailData/Signatures

You can then follow the instructions as outlined:
http://www.createarevolution.com/blog/2008/02/07/creating-an-html-signature-in-apple-mail/

Hi Rockit99, I followed your directions but it did not work. I am running snow leopard. I created the signature in dreamweaver, then went to safari and saved it as a webarchive but thats where I think I got lost. can you help?
 
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