Creating HTML signatures in Apple Mail

This content is 16 years old. I don't routinely update old blog posts as they are only intended to represent a view at a particular point in time. Please be warned that the information here may be out of date.

I recently switched my e-mail service from my own server to Google Apps. I’ll write more about the move (and the reasons behind it) in a separate post but, as a consequence, I’ve also started using the Apple Mail application to access my GMail over IMAP. On the whole, Apple Mail is pretty straightforward but one of the things I couldn’t work out is how to create an HTML signature.

HTML signature in Apple Mail
Melvin Rivera has the answer in his post on custom CSS signatures in Mail and the basic gist is to create a dummy signature in the Mail preferences; close Mail; create some custom HTML (with inline CSS to keep GMail happy – Melvin has an example linked from his post); save that as a .webarchive file using Safari; copy the new .webarchive file over the .webarchive file that corresponds to the dummy signature stored in ~/Library/Mail/Signatures (keeping the same filename); fire up Mail and open the preferences; rename the signature if required, then drag it to the mail account(s) with which it should be associated.

(To think that I thought Microsoft Outlook’s options were over-complicated!)

Sadly, neither Apple Mail, nor GMail seem to recognise the tel: links for phone numbers.

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