Add An Image To Your Email Signature

ScottAllen.com (http://www.scottallen.
com/)
Advice, Apple, life hack
How to Add an Image to Your Email Signature Without it

Appearing Like an Attachment
September 1, 2013 (http://www.scottallen.com/2013/09/01/)  80 Comments (http://www.scottallen.com/2013/09/how-to-add-an-image-to-your-email-
signature-without-it-appearing-like-an-attachment/#comments)
 By Scott (http://www.scottallen.com/author/scott/)
If you’re reading this, you know how aggravating it can be to get an email from someone, seemingly with an attachment, but
there is no a attachment. The culprit of this phantom le is invariably the logo or image they are using as part of their email
signature.
After a period of trying to ignore this at work, I nally broke down. When every email you receive from your colleagues looks to
have an attachment, it can drive you nuts. Typically an email with an attachment is of higher importance than one without. (it’s
almost as annoying as those ridiculous disclaimers people tack on to the end of their emails, but don’t get me started on that
pseudo-legal baloney.)
The issue rests on how the logo image is embedded in your signature. Here’s how to do that the right way:
(Update: this process has been tested and works on Apple Mail 9.3. Note the change in procedure below)
1. Open your Mail application.
2. In the menu go to Mail —– > Preferences ——- > Signatures.
3. Select the email account for which you want to assign this new signature.
4. Create a new signature and assign it to the email account you wish to use. **This is an important step. Don’t skip it. You can
leave the contents of the signature blank, but you must have this le created and associated with an account in order for the next
steps to work. Each signature you create is stored as a separate .mailsignature le (we will get into how to edit this le in a
minute.)
5. Close Mail.
6. Next we will need to locate the signature le you just created. This will take some drilling down through your computer. You
need to go to the folder named Library. Here is the fast way to get there: From Finder, click GO (appears in the top menu when
Finder is active). When you’ve clicked GO then hold down the Option Key. You should notice Library appear in the list. See Fig 1.

7. Now drill baby drill: Library ——– > Mail —— > V2 ———> Maildata —– >
Signatures
(Update 5-21-16: The folder changed from V2 to V3 so the proper path is
Library ——– > Mail —— > V3 ———> Maildata —– > Signatures) (http://www.scottallen.com/wp-
content/uploads/2013/09/go_to_library.png)
8. Sort the list view by Date. This will show you the last signature le you created, Fig 1
which should be your placeholder from earlier. This will be a .mailsignature le. (See
Fig 2 at the bottom of this post.)
9. Open this le using BBEdit or TextWrangler. Once you get this le opened, just leave it open for now.
10. Now we have to get into a little HTML code. You can download my example (http://www.scottallen.com/wp-
content/uploads/2016/05/example_signature_ le.html).
Example Signature File
*When you view the source of the sample le you will notice the trick with the logo that makes this whole thing work. The logo is
actually being called from our server. This was a le I posted. You’ll need to locate a public server to host your own logo in order
for this to work. You can get more elaborate with the HTML if you want. How much you want to tinker is up to you. Here is
another example (http://mydesignpad.com/create-a-html-signature-in-apple-mail-on-lion-os-x-10-7/) you might use.
11. Save the sample signature to your desktop. If you’re using my example, the le name should be example_signature_ le.html.
12. Open Safari. This is how you’ll preview what this le looks like. Open the signature le from inside of Safari. Note: when you
make edits to the le’s source, you can continue to preview the le from Safari. This is pretty standard if you do any sort of HTML
editing.
13. Go into your text editor (BBEdit or TextWrangler) where you have your placeholder le open. That’s the last le you created in
Mail with the extension .mailsignature. (note, if you can’s see le extensions in your Finder, you’ll need to update that
preference. See how here (http://support.apple.com/kb/PH10845).)
14. ALSO open example_signature_ le.html in BBEdit or TextWrangler. You will have BOTH of these les open.
15. Cut and paste your nal HTML out of the .html le into the .mailsignature le. Make sure you don’t delete the header
information in the .mailsignature le.
16. Save the newly edited .mailsignature le.
17. Next LOCK the le. You do this by right-mouse clicking on the le, then click Get
Info. Check the box next to Locked. You can also view a le’s info by holding down
Command on the keyboard, and at the same time pressing I. (Command+I). See Fig 2
18. Reboot your Mail program.
(http://www.scottallen.com/wp-
content/uploads/2013/09/mail_signature_folder.
19. Create a new message. If you’ve assigned the signature properly, the new one Fig 2
should show up. Good to note, that the inline image will appear as a broken image when
you’re inside of Mail–>Preferences –> Signatures. You’ll need to create a new email to see the logo.
20. Send your email to someone, or another of your email accounts and con rm that the logo appears, and that the email itself
does not appear like it has an attachment.
That’s it. It might be 20 steps, but it’s one big leap towards improving your digital image.
How to Add an Image to Your Apple Mail Email Signature Without it Appearing Like an Attachment
from Allen Media Group
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Lex • a year ago

Hi! Any updates for Mac version 10 software? V4 is out, and it seems that this code doesn't work anymore.
1△ ▽ • Reply • Share ›
scotteallen Mod > Lex • a year ago
I'm running Sierra 10.12.1 and Mail 10.1.

△ ▽ • Reply • Share ›
scotteallen Mod > Lex • a year ago
Let me look at it.

Olga Dvd > scotteallen • 16 days ago

Hello! Im running Sierra 10.12.6 and Mail 10.3. Could you help me pls?
leannegr > Olga Dvd • 7 days ago

I'm running the same as above Sierra 10.12.6 and Mail 10.3 and I can't get the logo to work. I've used this code many
times before and I'm just editing my old mailsignature file in V4 with an updated link to the logo. Signature works but logo
doesn't show up--just the little box with the ?. Please help.
scotteallen Mod > leannegr • 3 days ago
If you copy and paste just the logo URL into a browser, does the logo show up then? If not, if it shows up broken, check
for a typo in your URL.
David Townsend • 3 years ago

15. Cut and paste your final HTML out of the .html file into the .mailsignature file. Make sure you don’t delete the header information in the
.mailsignature file……WHERE in all the html code do you paste it???
Sarah Elizabeth Telcocci > David Townsend • 2 years ago

I had a hard time with that too.
You leave all this stuff (including the line with nothing), then paste the link to you image below, like so:
Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit
Content-Type: text/html;
charset=us-ascii
Message-Id: <15CC3A67-7CCA-41DE-9325-211DB7ADCF7A@ok.cox.net>
Mime-Version: 1.0 (Mac OS X Mail 8.2 ⧵(2102⧵))
<img src="example_signature_file_files/allenport_esig_logo_large.html" alt="AllenPort Logo" style="float: left; padding: 2px 6px 0 0;">
</body></html>
Of course, your post was a couple of months ago... but maybe this can help someone else! :)
Jamie > Sarah Elizabeth Telcocci • 2 years ago

thanks Sarah, helped me!
Steve Sowrey • 3 years ago

Awesome article, Scott. Still works like a charm years later and with Apple Mail 6.6. You rock!
Mike • 3 years ago

I'm curious if anyone has tried this recently... I'm running the most up to date version of Yosemite and in Library... I'm unable to find a folder
inside the Library folder named Mail.
Any insight would be much appreciated!

Tanmay Baste > Mike • 3 years ago

Search for "mail" in finder and click on a file you know is from mail, and then click on "Show in enclosed folder". Then just scroll
horizontally to the maildata folder and follow what's written in the above article. :)
Hope that helps.
Nick Phibbs • 3 months ago
Hello.
Anyway we can 'reverse engineer' this?

Alrhough im now all sorted. Any way, short of making everyone i know do this, of stopping the phantom attachments?
Warmly,
Nick
Gerald • 5 months ago

You can also use CampaignDot wich is a powerfull Wordpress plugin, totally free that creates email signatures for users, creates a vcard and
allow to add a marketing banner to the signature.
Hannah Lux Davis • 5 months ago

Hi Scott, I'm running on mac osSierra 10.12.6 and I am stuck right way - I don't have a Mail folder within the Library folder... so I can't even get
to the V3 or mail data or any of that. Help :)
Jorge • 9 months ago

Hello Scott, thank you for such useful article. It was good for me until the 20th step! Although I can see my image in my signature as I am
composing, when I test the signature by sending and email, the receiving email does not show the image but a box. All the other text in the
signature is shown correctly. Do you have any clue of the reason this could be happening to me? Thank you in advance.
scotteallen Mod > Jorge • 8 months ago
Hello Jorge, based on your question, I'm focusing first on the recipient's email client. Have you tried this on just on the one client? You
know how some clients automatically block incoming images (especially in offices)? I'd double check that's not happening. Another
thing to confirm, copy the URL to your image (out of the signature) and paste that into a fresh browser window. Confirm that the logo
does appear. Might sound redundant since the logo (hosted image) is appearing when you're composing, but worth confirming. Love to
hear back from you on your progress...
Jorge > scotteallen • 8 months ago

Hello Scott, after trying to access the URL of mi img from different devices, we realized something in our firewall settings was not
letting the file to leave the client. I have solved it now and now I have a nice signature. Thank you for your reply and your interest.
Warm regards.
scotteallen Mod > Jorge • 8 months ago
Nice!
ckdestef • a year ago

Wow! Worked first time through!!! Thanks so much. No I just need to help the rest of the staff implement it on PC Outlook (I'm the only mac
user). Any ideas?
Limor Farber > ckdestef • 9 months ago

Im having this same issue with other staff who are on pc. My signature works great when it sent to another Mac, but for some reason
people on PCs are not able to view the hosted images. I'm curious if anyone else had this problem and how anyone got this to work.
Michael • a year ago

I'm using MAC OS Sierra with Mail Client. Does anyone know the best way to host an image on a web-server to use on a HTML Signature?
scotteallen Mod > Michael • a year ago
Michael, I haven't started running Sierra just yet. Is the Mail Client very different from what's outlined in my article?
Tracy Francis • a year ago

Hello Scott. I've just moved to a Mac after 3 decades of Windows and MS Outlook and loving it! Now on EC and using Apple Mail. Hoping you
may be able to solve this one. I don't care about my own signature, what I care about is what you talk about at the beginning of your
introduction (which gave me great hope that I'd found the right article) - in that, the emails I RECEIVE all look like they have attachments when
they don't, or worse still, when they do include 1 attachment that I need, but it is showing as 12 attachments because of a ridiculous number of
images in their signature. Is there any way for Apple Mail to differentiate between that which is in an email signature and that which is a
purposeful attachment when I get it. My old Windows/Outlook did not treat signature images this way at all. I can't stand seeing the paperclip
for emails with signatures - then I'm also in danger of ignoring a paperclip that actually DOES have an attachment that I need and I miss it!!!
Yours hopefully.....
△ ▽ Reply Share ›
scotteallen Mod > Tracy Francis • a year ago
Hello Tracy,
Have you tried to organize your incoming email by Conversation? I'm curious to know how this impacts the outcome. Go to Mail -->
View --> Organize by Conversation. (See attached screen shot). If this is not helpful, can you post a screen shot that gives us a better
idea? Thanks!
⛺
Brittany Clark • a year ago

How do I open/preview the signature in safari as I am editing?
scotteallen Mod > Brittany Clark • a year ago
Hi Brittany,
There are two ways you can do this:
1. Once you open Safari, using the tool bar at the top of the screen, go to File--> Open. Then select the .html file you wish to preview.
The alternate way to do this (how I do it). Find in your Finder the .html file that you want to open, then right-mouse click on that file.
Select Safari to open it. Love to know if this helps. Thanks for dropping by!
Latis Gill Phichitsingh • 2 years ago

I have done all of this and my "signature" appears but my logo appears as a blue question mark. What am I doing wrong?
scotteallen Mod > Latis Gill Phichitsingh • 2 years ago
Hello Latis,
Try to copy and paste just the image URL from your bit of html code into a browser. See if the image comes up properly. This will
confirm that the syntax for the image url is correct. It sounds like you might have a small code typo in there somewhere.
Daniel > scotteallen • 6 months ago

Hi Scott, I tried this and still get the blue questions mark. The URL is file:///Users/ etc etc. say help appreciated. Thanks
scotteallen Mod > Daniel • 6 months ago
Hi Daniel,
Thanks for your comment!
The URL you reference in your question is "file://Users/ etc." That's a private URL, which means it's only visible on your
computer. You need to place your sig image on a webserver so it can be served up from a public URL. Your URL should
look something like: http://somedomain/myemailsiglogo. For instance, my sig logo is hosted on my server for this blog.
Its URL is:
⛺
. Hope this helps. Have a great day!
Latis Gill Phichitsingh > scotteallen • 2 years ago

I did it :) I have a beautiful email signature with linked social media icons and the works.
Thanks
scotteallen Mod > Latis Gill Phichitsingh • 2 years ago
Right On!! Way to go. Glad you got it. :)

Joel Zieve • 2 years ago

Scott, this is an awesome tip and has worked great for me. Up until 2 days ago that is. At that point, on all 3 of my Macs (iMac, Mac Mini,
Macbook White), all running the latest OS:
With this in my signature, the email appears to send, but it never reaches the recipient. It took me a hours to figure out that all I had to do was
remove the image from the signature and the email would send/arrive successfully.
To make things more weird, if I place a link anywhere in the email that links to a PNG or JPG file anywhere on the web, the email also does not
get received.
Any idea might be going on? Anyone else seeing this?
Thanks!
scotteallen Mod > Joel Zieve • 2 years ago
Joel, I was reading this thinking it's totally weird. Maybe a file corruption. But then I re-read your note. Links in email can be considered
a security risk by some systems. I'm assuming the email leaves your system? Maybe there is a security setting on your end that got
changed a few days back? Have you tried sending this email to a gmail account or something like that?
Joel Zieve > scotteallen • 2 years ago

Scott, thanks for looking at this. I have been doing MANY tests to my gmail account (from my non-gmail account). At this point
I've concluded it's an issue with my email/web provider (Hostgator). I called them, the 1st level tech couldn't figure it out (sees
the email hitting their severs) and is sending it to 2nd level support. So time will tell.
That's interesting. Do you have a different SMPT server you throw your outbound email at? Even temporarily, might help
narrow the possibilities.
Joel Zieve > scotteallen • 2 years ago

Dude, great call! Changing the outgoing SMPT server to Google makes it work again! I've updated my Hostgater ticket -
thank you so much!
NICE!
scotteallen Mod • 2 years ago

Hi everyone! It's great to see all of your comments. Awesome to see others helping out too. Even today I still get email that shows the logo as
an attachment. (sigh) Help spread the word. #sigsnotdocs
Luisa Vidales • 2 years ago

Scott? I hope you still check this, because I'm having trouble. I've downloaded your example like 4 times, and it doesn't appear in code in
TextEdit. What am I doing wrong? I'm stuck on this step. Help!!! (Other than that, the tutorial is very detailed and very VERY helpful. Thanks :) )
scotteallen Mod > Luisa Vidales • 2 years ago
Hi Luisa, were you able to solve the issue with this?

Luisa Vidales > scotteallen • 2 years ago

No :( I mean, I could solve my original problem, which was that I couldn't see your example in TextEdit (I've downloaded
TextWrangler now, like you said in the article). But now my problem is that there isn't a .mailsignature file, even though I've
created a new signature!
I've attached a screenshot of the file endings I found instead of .mailsignature.
⛺
scotteallen Mod > Luisa Vidales • 2 years ago
Hi Luisa, I ran through the procedure from scratch this morning. I noticed that the path I listed out for getting to the
signature file changed. So rather than going: Library ——– > Mail —— > V2 ———> Maildata —– > Signatures, you
should go here: Library ——– > Mail —— > V3 ———> Maildata —– > Signatures (Notice folder V2 changed to V3). While
I was running through this I got the idea to cut a video. I've posted that to the bottom of this post. Hope this is the
solution. :-)
Luisa Vidales > scotteallen • 2 years ago

Thank you so, so much, Scott! :) That was very helpful.
Kim Liebich • 2 years ago

SO struggling... hoping someone has the answer? Running OS X El capitan version 10.11.3... and apple mail version 9.2 (3112) I've done the
deep dig and can't find any sort of .mailsignature ... pretty please. Attachment look is a huge pet peeve. Thanks so much! =)
Luisa Vidales > Kim Liebich • 2 years ago

I can't find a .mailsignature file either, just some that have .plist.
I'm running OS X El Capitan too, so maybe that's it....
scotteallen Mod > Kim Liebich • 2 years ago
Kim, were you able to resolve this issue? Honestly I did the upgrade to El Cap but haven't moved an image-laden sig file.
Kim Liebich > scotteallen • 2 years ago

Hi Scott - I did not. Would love some thoughts.
Kim Liebich > Kim Liebich • 2 years ago

It's encouraging that we might find an answer. =)
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Advice, Apple, life hack

How to Add an Image to Your Email Signature Without it

1. Open your Mail application.

2. In the menu go to Mail —– > Preferences ——- > Signatures.

(Update 5-21-16: The folder changed from V2 to V3 so the proper path is

Example Signature File

16. Save the newly edited .mailsignature le.

18. Reboot your Mail program.

Join the discussion…

Lex • a year ago

scotteallen Mod > Lex • a year ago

I'm running Sierra 10.12.1 and Mail 10.1.

scotteallen Mod > Lex • a year ago

Let me look at it.

Olga Dvd > scotteallen • 16 days ago

leannegr > Olga Dvd • 7 days ago

scotteallen Mod > leannegr • 3 days ago

David Townsend • 3 years ago

Sarah Elizabeth Telcocci > David Townsend • 2 years ago

Jamie > Sarah Elizabeth Telcocci • 2 years ago

Steve Sowrey • 3 years ago

Mike • 3 years ago

Any insight would be much appreciated!

Tanmay Baste > Mike • 3 years ago

Anyway we can 'reverse engineer' this?

Gerald • 5 months ago

Hannah Lux Davis • 5 months ago

Jorge • 9 months ago

scotteallen Mod > Jorge • 8 months ago

Jorge > scotteallen • 8 months ago

scotteallen Mod > Jorge • 8 months ago

ckdestef • a year ago

Limor Farber > ckdestef • 9 months ago

Michael • a year ago

scotteallen Mod > Michael • a year ago

Tracy Francis • a year ago

scotteallen Mod > Tracy Francis • a year ago

Brittany Clark • a year ago

scotteallen Mod > Brittany Clark • a year ago

Latis Gill Phichitsingh • 2 years ago

scotteallen Mod > Latis Gill Phichitsingh • 2 years ago

Daniel > scotteallen • 6 months ago

scotteallen Mod > Daniel • 6 months ago

Latis Gill Phichitsingh > scotteallen • 2 years ago

scotteallen Mod > Latis Gill Phichitsingh • 2 years ago

Right On!! Way to go. Glad you got it. :)

Joel Zieve • 2 years ago

scotteallen Mod > Joel Zieve • 2 years ago

Joel Zieve > scotteallen • 2 years ago

scotteallen Mod > Joel Zieve • 2 years ago

Joel Zieve > scotteallen • 2 years ago

scotteallen Mod > Joel Zieve • 2 years ago

scotteallen Mod • 2 years ago

Luisa Vidales • 2 years ago

scotteallen Mod > Luisa Vidales • 2 years ago

Hi Luisa, were you able to solve the issue with this?

Luisa Vidales > scotteallen • 2 years ago

scotteallen Mod > Luisa Vidales • 2 years ago

Luisa Vidales > scotteallen • 2 years ago

Kim Liebich • 2 years ago

Luisa Vidales > Kim Liebich • 2 years ago

scotteallen Mod > Kim Liebich • 2 years ago