Exchange Online disclaimers and signatures

Exchange Online, not on-premises Exchange

This page covers Microsoft 365 mail. See on-premises Exchange for the hosted equivalent.

Disclaimers

Text appended to outbound mail by the service — the confidentiality notices and regulatory statements many organizations must attach. Each disclaimer has its content and a Users view controlling who it applies to, so it can be scoped to part of the organization.

A disclaimer appends to every message, including a two-word reply

Three paragraphs of legal notice on “Yes, thanks” is the normal outcome, and it accumulates down a long thread. That is usually accepted as the price of the requirement, but show the customer a real example before rolling one out — the reaction is often to shorten the text.

Where a disclaimer exists for legal reasons its wording belongs to the customer. Implement what they supply rather than editing it for length or style.

Email signature management

Applies consistent signatures across the organization instead of relying on each person to configure their own. Each signature has an add/edit screen and a Users view assigning it, and signatures typically draw on directory attributes so one template generates a personalised signature per user.

The directory is the prerequisite

A managed signature publishes whatever the directory holds to every external recipient. Wrong or missing job titles and telephone numbers become wrong signatures on customer-facing mail. Tidy the directory before rolling signatures out, not after someone notices their old job title.

Signature management is the one screen that survives read-only

Where the tenant application is read-only and has user-management permission, Email Signature Management is the only Exchange Online screen that remains. Everything else on this page disappears.

So an organization showing signatures and nothing else is not broken — see why the Exchange Online menu is missing or nearly empty.

Related

• Exchange Online overview
• Transport and journaling rules

Who a disclaimer or signature applies to

Disclaimer Users and, for signatures, Users, set which people the rule applies to. A disclaimer or signature that is configured but assigned to nobody is inert — it exists, it validates, and it never appears on a message.

When a signature is not being applied, check the user assignment before the signature content.