Reader L.T. desires greater flexibility in the signatures appended to his email messages. He writes:
I have over 75 signatures in my Signature file and am always adding and deleting from that file. I would prefer not to be locked into the same signature time after time, and find it a nuisance going into the Mail Preferences each time I want to insert a different signature in my email. Is there a way to get, force, or program Apple Mail to automatically insert either sequential or randomized signatures from that Signature file each time an email is generated?
Yes, and it’s a feature built right into Mail. Just choose Mail -> Preferences and click the Signatures tab in the resulting window. As you’re probably aware, this is where you create your signatures. (And for those who aren’t aware, just click the Plus (+) button at the bottom of the window to create a new signature.) All your signatures are listed in the middle pane when you click the All Signatures entry in the left side of the window.
At the bottom of the window you’ll see a Choose Signature pop-up menu. When this menu is active you’ll see that you have the option to choose signatures At Random or In Sequential Order. These are the options you’re looking for.
People sometimes get confused, however, when they discover that this pop-up menu is grayed out. This occurs when you select either the All Signatures entry or any account that doesn’t have a signature attached to it.
And why wouldn’t an account have a signature attached to it? Because you either haven’t selected an account and clicked the Plus button to add a signature to it (which, by default, will be your name followed by that account’s email address) or dragged a signature from the All Signatures area to one of your accounts. Users new to Mail are routinely confounded by this.
Be confounded no more. Just be sure an account has at least two signatures attached to it and you can put the At Random and In Sequential Order options to good use.