Adding An Image To Your Windows Live Hotmail Signature

Thursday, August 4th, 2011 by jconboy | Filed Under: E-Mail Help

 

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Wilma from AK asks:

How do I add an image to my Hotmail signature?

If you have been trying to find a way to add an image to your Windows Live Hotmail e-mail messages lately, you have likely become confused, befuddled, or just plain old ticked off while attempting to find that magic button which allows you to do so. Unfortunately, that magic button currently does not exist. Whether by design or by mistake, Microsoft has decided to not only bury the Hotmail signature editor within a convoluted e-mail options interface, but has also chosen to make it a bit of a chore to add a proper image to your e-mail signature. The good news is, it can be done. Here’s how:

Step 1. Go to Hotmail.com or Live.com and log on to your account.

Step 2. Depending on your settings, you will be brought to either your inbox straight away, or your Windows Live home page. If you are brought to your inbox, skip ahead to Step 3.

If, however, you are brought to your Windows Live home page, find the “Hotmail highlights” section and click on the “Go to inbox (x)” link just below “Hotmail highlights,” or the “Inbox” link beneath the line of sub text showing the number of unread messages currently in your inbox.

Your Hotmail Inbox should now be displayed.

Step 3. Find the “Options” link in the upper right corner of your Inbox, and click it. The “Reading pane settings” menu will appear.

Step 4. Click the “More Options…” menu link. You will now be taken to the “Hotmail Options” page.

Step 5. In the “Hotmail Options” page, find the “Writing email” sub heading located halfway down the page. Click the “Personal email signature link” directly below this sub-heading.

You will now be taken to the “Personal email signature” page. Here you will find a simple Microsoft Word-like editor for adding, formatting, and linking text to use for your default e-mail signature. At first glance it looks as though there are no buttons nor options for adding an image to your signature. While this seems like a glaring omission in Hotmail’s feature set, there is a roundabout method to getting an image to show in your e-mail signature:

Step 6. In a new browser tab or window, open up Google, Yahoo, or Bing, and search for a (preferably free) image host. You should see places such as Imageshack, Photobucket, and TinyPic appear in your search results. Take a moment to scan through these results and, once you have found an image host that works for you, sign up (if required) and upload your signature image to their service.
(Note: For best results, ensure you image file is of type .jpg or .gif; most other file formats are not as widely supported by web browsers, and therefore may not display correctly if used.)

Step 7. Once your image has been uploaded, your image host should provide you with a “direct link” to your image which will typically look something like “http://www.[yourimagehost.com]/894u5hyyyyy/yoursignatureimage.jpg.” Find and copy this link, and paste it into a temporary text file (or e-mail it to yourself.)

Step 8. Return to the tab or window with your Hotmail “Personal email signature” editor page. In the signature editor menu bar, click the arrow next to the words “Rich text” and select “Edit in HTML” from the drop down menu. The text editor box will change to an HTML editor box, with a lone <br> tag contained within.

Step 9. Beneath the <br> tag, copy and paste the following code:

<img src="xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx" >

Step 10. Copy the direct link to your image, and replace the “xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx” with your image link. Your line of code should now look something like this:

<img src="http://www.yourimagehost.com/894u5hyyyyy/yoursignatureimage.jpg">

Step 11. Click the Save button, return to your inbox, and send an e-mail to yourself.

You should now see your signature image appear when composing an e-mail and in your received test message. If you do not, return to your signature editor and make sure the code entered has been inserted as outlined above. If all of the code looks ok, consider trying out a different file host and linking your signature image to your image(s) on that service instead.

~J. Conboy

Tags: E-mail Signature Images, Hotmail Signature

This entry was posted on Thursday, August 4th, 2011 at 8:20 PM and is filed under E-Mail Help. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.Both comments and pings are currently closed. 14710