Signatures in Thunderbird

[Nermal]

I've just set up Thunderbird on my dad's Windows PC, but I can't figure out how to set up signatures. In Outlook Express, he had a signature set up somewhere, so that he could click a "Sign" toolbar button to add a signature to his messages.

Unfortunately, I can't figure out how to do this in Thunderbird. The only signature options I can find ask me to browse for a file (a text file containing the signature?), but I can't figure out how to add a Sign button to the toolbar or anything like that - it seems to want to add a signature to *every* message!

So how can I selectively add signatures to messages?

 

[rinseout]

Are you sure that the button you're thinking of didn't digitally sign the email (a la OpenPGP, GnuPG, PGP), rather than simply attach a signature file?

Digital signatures provide a means of proving to your recipients that you're not being impersonated, and that the message they're receiving is exactly what you wrote. Signature text files, on the other hand, are a decoration.

 

[Nermal]

I'm not sure whether the button in OE was actually labelled "Sign" or not, but it just added the signature text. This is what we're trying to do in Thunderbird too. We're not trying to set up digital signatures or anything like that.

 

[Westside guy]

In Thunderbird, signatures are added on a per-account basis.

Go to the "Tools" menu and select "Account Settings". Under each account, click on the account name itself rather than the sub-sections under it. You should see a signature section.

 

[Nermal]

But won't that add a signature to every message? We want to be able to selectively sign messages, not have a signature stuck on every single message.

 

[Westside guy]

Originally posted by Nermal
But won't that add a signature to every message? We want to be able to selectively sign messages, not have a signature stuck on every single message.

Yes and no. It will, by default, append the signature - but it does it in the compose box, so you can simply delete it.

I know some other e-mail clients don't let you even see the sig - they append after you hit "send". But T-bird doesn't work that way.