Before I continue, this blog is primarily about politics. However, with this new setup and all I have also felt the need to diversify.
Where I work there are about 80 computers that I and 2 others maintain. From time to time we are tasked to install software on each machine, by hand. This drives me crazy because with group policy we can distribute software to every computer on the network without having to physically visit each machine. I have tested this on my home domain and it works great.
Recently we were tasked wtih installing a disclaimer type signature on every computer across the company. I started doing some research and discovered that all of the programs in office 2003 can be manipulated with group policy. I installed the necessary components but the setting to manipulate signatures weren’t available. After some more searching I discovered that Exchange does not have the ability to insert a custom footer on every e-mail. This is crazy.
The next thing I looked for was some software to do this. The software exists but it is expensive. I asked some of my peers what a good solution might be and after having the same sentiments about exhange not being able to have global signatures they reminded me of vbs scripts. Some quick searching turned up a few scripts and I found a good one written by Peter Aarts.
The script works only with outlook 2003 and if you are at least a little bit familiar with coding and what not it should be easy to edit for your needs. It works with Active Directory and draws information from almost any data that is inserted in a user’s profile. The signature is created wtih html and you can make practically any form of a personalized signature automatically. What you would do with this script is have it run when the user logs in. There are numerous ways to do that.
Tags: administrator, exchange, microsoft, network, outlook
You are my personal hero!
That was exactly the kind of thing my company needed. Keep up the good work.
Thanks. I re-read this yesterday due to the number of hits it has recieved and noticed I could have been a little more clear. If there is anything I should add please let me know.
Thanks for sharing the vbs script – it’s really appreciated.
You wrote that the script only works with Office 2003 – do you know why? Office 2007 is a no go??
This script is awesome, has saved me a load of time deploying signatures. One issue i am having is that when replying to plain text or rich text emails the signatures do nit appear unless i have sent a new plain text email before hand.
Am looking into a fix but if you know of one already please let me know.
Thanks, it has helped a lot of people and I am glad I can get this out there and help others.
Unfortunately I have not worked as a network admin and fortunately I have not been tasked with something as retarded as walking around to 300 computers and putting in some BS signature.
Because I that I haven’t used this script in quite a while. I don’t know about other office versions, either. Sorry.
The script seems perfect to what I want to do in my Outlook, one similar signature for all my employees.
But…. Where to put the script? directly into Active Directory?
There are a number of ways. The goal is to have the script run when the user logs in. I haven’t messed with that in a while but the best way is to use group policy and have it as a login scrip that runs once and apply that to a group that everyone is in.
Do a search for “group policy login script”
Thanks very much for your efforts.
Is this adaptable to set one signature for certain users, and another for other users?