ICT & Computing in Education

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Creating multiple signatures in Gmail

Photo by Nicole Honeywill on Unsplash

Many of us use the same email address for different aspects of our lives, so having more than one email signature can be very useful. Unfortunately, Gmail doesn’t have a simple process for enabling that, but there is a workaround: using Canned Responses.

First, go to Settings.

The Settings option in Gmail, by Terry Freedman

Next, scroll down till you get to the Signature option, and click No signature. This may seem unintuitive, but it will look odd if you end up having your standard signature plus a canned response one. You could delete the standard one when you want to use another one of course, so if you only want to use a different signature occasionally, that would be a sensible approach. However, if you are likely to want to use different signatures throughout the day, the method I’m about to show you is better, because it’s less hassle.

Gmail signature option, by Terry Freedman

Having got rid of the standard signature — although it will still be there should you wish to use it again — it’s now time to create a canned response. To do so, start a new email and enter the signature as you would like it to appear. Then click on the three vertical dots in the bottom right of your email, select Canned Responses, then Save draft as template, then Save as new template:

Creating a canned response, by Terry Freedman
In my example, I’ve saved it as “Demo”. So the next time I write an email and want to use my “Demo” signature, I simply compose my email as usual, then click the three dots, choose Canned Responses, and select “Demo”. As you can see from the screenshot below, I now have three signatures to choose from: Demo, ICT and Writer.

Inserting a canned response into an email, by Terry Freedman

And here’s what the completed email looks like:

An email with a canned response signature, by Terry Freedman

So, not as straightforward a process as one might like, but once you’ve created the signatures you want then you can select them very easily, as we’ve seen. And there’s nothing to stop you creating even more!