There are two different methods you can use to keep an assortment of premade e-mail signatures on hand for use when you want them, without having to erase the sig you have and type in another one:

Storing Sigs on a Homepage Site

You can create an HTML file you can use in your e-mail signature and keep it in your homepage directory, if you have a homepage. If you don't have a homepage, get one, they're free. Here's a list of free homepage providers.

I have a signature file currently on this homepage site, click here to see it.

What you will be doing is actually creating a narrow webpage, one that is the width of your e-mail screen. Our e-mail is approximately 440 pixels in width, so the first thing you need to do is create a table to limit the width of your text and graphics, like this:

<html>
<table width="440" border="0" background="URL"><tr><td>
...put your signature content here...
</table>
</html>

I recommend using a background for the table, and using the same background in your actual signature of your e-mail; not all backgrounds will match up perfectly and the table background may turn out noticeably out of alignment with the rest of your signature background (this won't matter if your entire signature is on the webpage), so you may want to choose a solid color GIF graphic. For a page of solid color GIFs, click here.

Once you have a signature that looks the way you want it, link it into your e-mail by putting this code in your actual e-mail signature:

<html>
<body background="URL">
...anything you want before the embedded sig page...
<bgsound src="URL">
...anything you want after the embedded sig page...
</html>

using the URL of the background image and the URL of the signature HTML file you created on your homepage. I know the <bgsound src=...> tag doesn't make any sense, since this isn't a sound file you're embedding, but it works to pull the webpage code into your e-mail signature for some reason.

If you choose related names for your signatures stored on your homepage site, you can switch them by changing only one or two characters in the link from your e-mail sig, sig1.html, sig2.html, etc.

Storing Sigs in E-mail Messages

This is pretty simple, it's done using copy and paste. Go into your signature box, press Cmd-A (to highlight the sig contents) then Cmd-C (to copy them), go to Mail, click Write, put the cursor in the message text area, hit Return (to create a blank line before the codes), and press Cmd-V (to paste them in the message). Address the message to yourself, and put in a relevant Subject title, send the message.

Save the message in Saved mail, and when you want to use that signature, just open that stored message and copy the codes, pasting them back into your sig box.

You can save as many signatures as you have room for in Saved mail with this method.

Got It?

Using these methods, you could put together a Christmas sig now to use later on, and pull it out and use it when you need it in December. You could create a business sig and a personal sig. Using copy and paste, cut the codes temporarily when you're posting to a newsgroup or writing to a computer user, and then paste back the code after you send the message.

Paul Erickson  

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