Email Signatures - Outlook 2010 – JAWS

Creating a New Email Signature

Creating a signature in Outlook is one of those frustrating exercises that crops up now and again - one of those tasks you never complete regularly enough to maintain perfect recall of each step every time. So, in this post, I'm going to step through how I approach creating a new email signature in Outlook 2010 using JAWS V16. As with all my step through work, the process here may need a bit of tweaking on your part to allow for differences in Office and JAWS versions. Also, you probably use different JAWS hotkeys and methods to me anyway – which is great I might add – because the reality is that there are always 2 or 3 ways to achieve the same thing. Anyway, with all that in mind, let's get to it...

Creating a Quick Email Signature in Outlook 2010

1. Launch MS Outlook 2010 and navigate to the File tab using ALT F.
2. DOWN ARROW to the Options item in the menu and use ENTER or activate it directly using the hotkey of: T.
3. DOWN ARROW to the Mail item in the Outlook Options dialog box then TAB to the Signatures button (or use ALT N). Activate this button to open the Signatures and Stationery dialog box.
4. First, TAB around this dialog box to get a feel for the options there then, when you have finished exploring, locate the New button (ALT N) and activate it. This will launch the New Signature dialog box which will prompt you for a name for your new signature. Type one in (for example: formal work, internal only, informal and so on) then use the ENTER key.
5. Focus will still be on the New button so TAB all the way round to the Font Face combo box.
6. By default this will be set to something like Calibri but feel free to change this to something else. In fact, if you are making a work signature, you'll probably have to select one of the corporate fonts installed in your company. I tend to go for plain old Arial which is our standard font inside RNIB. Anyway, complete this field by either typing in what you need or by using ALT DOWN ARROW to expand the list and choosing from there. When you've picked your font, move on with TAB.
7. Now this form can have some peculiar behaviour and it's down to Microsoft making this toolbar different from the rest of the dialog box. So, if you find yourself getting confused, just TAB around the fields again and refocus.
8. Focus on the font face dialog box and change this to whatever is required before using TAB to move on again.
9. Keep using TAB until you have focus on an unlabelled edit or input area. JAWS may well read some odd information about this field and if you are in any doubt, TAB your way to the hyperlink button and then TAB once - this is the field you need to be in.
10. Now type in your signature exactly as you want it to appear at the foot of your email. A simple formal work signature for example might be as follows:

Harry Blender
Chrome Holdings Incorporated
http://www.CHI.com
0883 7823910
* Twitter and LinkedIn links here etc*

11. Signatures conform to a less is more approach so don't go overboard. Include the important contact details and anything else of particular importance and generally try to keep it to around 5 or 6 lines of text. When you are done, check the text and ensure that the lines of text are correctly formatted and spelled.
12. When you have finished, use ALT S to save your signature.
13. Although focus will be on the OK button you may want to TAB back around the options and check them. In particular, the New Messages: combo box can be set to point to one of your current email signatures. Doing so means that every time you create a new message the chosen signature is already present in the main edit window of the email. Of course, if you want to manually choose what signature is included when you send an email then you need to ensure the New Messages combo box is set to none.
14. When you have finished checking, TAB to the OK button and activate it with SPACEBAR. Focus will return to the Outlook Options dialog box so once again move to the OK button and activate it with the SPACEBAR.

Now you need to test out your new signature.

Applying the New Signature

1. Create a new email message and type in some example text.
2. Ensure the cursor is left in an appropriate position as this is where your chosen signature will be inserted into the email.
3. Use the keystroke sequence of ALT N, A, S to move focus to a small menu that contains the names of your signature files.
4. ARROW UP or DOWN the menu to focus on the appropriate signature and use ENTER to insert it in the email.
5. Check the text of the chosen signature and remove any extra blank lines - that's it!

So that's it for email signatures - at least for now...!