Summary
  

Since Lotus Notes R8.x was introduced people discovered that it was now possible to tweak their mail signature a bit more than before. In the Pre-R8.x days, you could only type text into the Signature section of the Preferences dialogbox … or use a file stored on your hard drive.
  

In R8.x you can now change the font size, the font color, add an image and do a few more things right from the Signature tab of the “More -> Preferences” dialogbox.
  

You can do almost anything … except change the font that’s being used … but you might wonder “is there a work-around?”. And the answer is “Yes there is!”
   

First, The Warning …
  

Whenever I get a call from an employee who asks if it’s possible to change the font of their mail signature to “Comic Sans” (or some other weird and wacky font), I tell them 2 things:
  

(1) “Yes, you can change it. However, keep in mind that only some fonts are common to most computers and some fonts are only on YOUR computer. Stick to “Arial, Comic Sans, Georgia, Tahoma” and a few other fonts if you want your mail signature to look almost exactly the same on all computers” (see site note #1 below).
  
(2) “Now that you have been properly warned, here’s how to change the fonts in your mail signature … well, I’ll just forward you the instructions in an email, it will be simpler”.
   

How To Change The Fonts In Your Mail Signature …
  

Here is the step-by-step method that I send to my employees:
  

Step 1 – Open your Mail File, go to your Inbox and click on the “New” action button to bring up an empty memo.
   

Step 2 – If your current signature is not automatically appended to new memos, place the cursor in the body of the memo and then click on the action button “More -> Insert Signature”. In the dialogbox that appears, simply click on “OK” to insert your signature.
  

Step 3 – Now that you see your signature, format it the way you want it. Select your name with your mouse and change the font of your name (for example). Change the size of your name too if you want to. Also insert “tabs” to properly align phone numbers if you want to (but keep in mind that tabs don’t display well if the recipient uses a web browser to read his emails).
  

Step 4 – Once your mail signature looks the way you want it to appear, use your mouse to select it completely.
  

Step 5 – Now that your mail signature is selected, click on the menu “Edit -> Copy”.
  

Step 6 – Click on the view action “More -> Preferences”.
 

Step 7 – Go to the “Mail -> Signature” tab of the Preference dialogbox and then delete your current mail signature.
  

Step 8 – When ready … press CTRL+V on your keyboard to “paste” your updated signature OR you can also click on the little “T” icon and then on “Paste”.
   

Step 9 – Click on “OK” to save your new mail signature. You will be taken back to the new memo you had just created.
 

Step 10 – Delete everything in that new memo and then click on the “More -> Insert Signature” action button to see your new & updated signature.
  

Step 11 – Repeat Step 3 to 10 until you are happy with the results.
  

Step 12 – Send that email to a few colleagues or friends to ask them to check if it looks good or not.
  

Note #1 : For the list of fonts that are compatible across platforms, I recommend using “browser safe fonts” like those listed here.
  

Note #2: I cannot stress the importance of using plain fonts enough … because that nice (but strange) “Mercurius Script Bold” is only installed on *your* computer and it will only display correctly on *your* computer no matter how hard you try (I had to explain this to someone). Also, for example again, “Script” doesn’t display well in web browsers based on a few tests I did.

Note #3: Now that you know that you can paste pretty much anything in there … you can even paste tables if you want to … go nuts … but test!
  

Note #4: Did I mention testing?
  

Or … Go With A Commercial Product …
  
Keep in mind that there are a few commercial products out there that allow you to set and customize your employee’s mail signature. Right off the top of my head, I can only remember the “Crossware Mail Signature” product from folks at Crossware because I stopped at their booth each and every year for the past few Lotusphere (note: I’m not one of their customers and we do not use their product where I work).
  

Anyway, if you need to “brand” your company and standardize signatures, you really can’t expect *all* your employees to do it consistently so buying a commercial product might be your only option (or coding something yourself that does that).
         

In Other News …
   

I’ve been amazingly busy since the beginning of May … but I’m currently working on version 3 of the Smart Upgrade guide in which I will explain how to create a package that includes R8.5.1 and the Fix Pack of your choice in 1 large self-contained executable file. Stay tuned for that new version in the coming weeks.
  

Conclusion …
 

Hopefully, Lotus will modify the “Preference” dialogbox in a future release to allow end users to pick and choose the fonts they want to use in their mail signature … we can hope right? Until then … have fun copy-pasting!
   

Thanks for reading!
 

Marc