Take Control of Your Signature in Gmail

I've used Gmail for personal use since it was first a thing and have always loved it. But just recently I started using it for business purposes and have run into a couple quirks that are a little frustrating.

One big issue I found was not having very granular control of how your signature works. For business use I wanted my signature to show up on new emails but not on every since reply. But alas, this wasn't possible!

Your only options available if you turn a signature on are to have it appear at the bottom of the whole email chain, so you end up with tons of signatures stuck at the bottom, or to have it appear above the quoted text which looks a little less weird. After searching multiple forums the "best" answer was to have it appear at the top and just delete it. After doing this for 2 days it got old pretty darn quick!

Oh, and forget about having multiple signatures to pick from.

So here is a little work-around to make managing your signatures in Gmail a little easier.

If you are using G-Suite, first log into the Admin console and enable Canned responses in Labs

G-Suite Admin Console > Apps > G-Suite > G-Mail > Labs > Canned Responses

Either enable it for everyone in your organization or allow individuals to turn it on. If you are using personal Gmail then this option will be accessible in the labs area

Now compose a new message and create your signature then click on the ellipses in the lower right hand corner:

Select Canned responses and click on new canned response.

You'll now get a popup asking you to name your canned response:

Now when you compose a new message, you can select your signature from the canned response and quickly add it to the bottom of your message:

It still requires a bit of manual intervention, but is waaaaaay easier than deleting your signature on every single reply!

It's also a good way to manage multiple signatures if you want a "full" and a "short" signature or maybe need a different signature based on who you are corresponding with.

Cover image courtesy of pngtree.com