Exchange Mailboxes and Signatures


vote!One of the longest standing requests of the community regarding Exchange features is the request to have the ability to share e-mail signatures between Outlook for desktop, Outlook Web Access (OWA) and mobile clients like Outlook for iOS. Several 3rd party vendors have been filling this gap with solutions with the possibility of adding standardized signatures on the transport layer or through application add-ins for the WYSIWYG approach.

The Outlook products don’t share signatures; Outlook Web Access does store the signature in a so-called Folder Associated Item (FAI) in the mailbox, making the signature persist when moving the mailbox around. But that unfortunately is only for Outlook Web Access; Outlook for desktop signatures are stored in files in one’s user profile, and Outlook for iOS only allows you to configure a single line, which often is used to apologize for any typos in the message, more common when using mobile devices, by setting it to ‘Mail sent using mobile’ or text of similar nature.

However, after a recent discussion with the relevant product groups by Jeff Guillet, the product groups challenged MVPs that there is indeed a significant demand for this feature by getting people to vote on UserVoice. Jeff with the MVPs designed a functional specification for this feature, which will be shared with the product groups at a later date. There is no reason why we can’t expect this feature to work for both Exchange Online as well as Exchange on-premises. Part of the request will also be to be able to manage the signature through PowerShell, similar to how the Outlook Web Access signature can now be managed using Set-MailboxMessageConfiguration.

So, power to the community and get your voice heard if you want this feature. You can vote on UserVoice here. Thank you.