Creating Multiple Signatures for Mozilla Thunderbird

Program/Email Client: Mozilla Thunderbird
Addons: Quicktext | Hesslow Extensions

If you’re like me, you have different signatures for you emails depending on which email it’s coming from, mainly if it’s a new email or a reply or forward. (side note: if you’re confused about email etiquette, I’ve written an article on it over at Exercise and Mind called Email Etiquette 101). Another caveat is that I have about a dozen different email addresses that sometimes have the same signature, sometimes not.

Email client Microsoft Outlook has a great feature that lets you define a different signature for composing a new email, or a reply, but Mozilla Thunderbird doesn’t have this feature.

In my never ending quest to distance myself from the large monopolists like Microsoft, Thunderbird is actually very comparable if not better in some regards (look into Add-ons).

Creating Multiple Signatures for Thunderbird

The best way I’ve found in Thunderbird to create the different signatures is with the addon called Quicktext. This allows you to create snippets of text that you can quickly insert into an email from the right click action menu within Thunderbird.

Installing Quicktext on Thunderbird

To install Quicktexts you must add it as an addon. So, within Thunderbird:

1. select Tools -> Addons
2. search for Quicktext (top right corner)
3. click Install next to the proper addon
4. restart Thunderbird.

Adding Signatures to Quicktext in Thunderbird

Now that Quicktext is installed in Thunderbird, you must add the quick texts (ie. the signatures) you so desire. To do this,

1. select Tools -> Quicktext
2. add group (a smart name for the group would be signatures)
3. add template (here you can add as many signatures you so desire, with the option to use html code)
4. click save

Using Signatures with Quicktext and Thunderbird

Once you’ve created the signatures (quick texts) that your heart so desires, you will notice that when you compose any kind of email message, if you right click somewhere within the body of the message (ideally where you want to put the signature) you will see in the menu item quicktexts and you can select which signature you wish there.

Quicktext also adds a drop down menu just above the text editing features of the email that you can use instead of right clicking.