Backup / save your Hotmail signature + Restore it

After you add a signature to Hotmail, an earlier version of Microsoft's webmail service allowed you to enable or disable your email signature on demand; this is no longer the case. If you decide to hide your signature, but spent some time customizing it, you don't need to lose all your work. In this tutorial, we will show you how to backup or save on your computer a copy of the code that Windows Live Hotmail uses for your signature. Should you decide to restore it later on, all you'll have to do is paste the saved code in the signature editor, instead of having to start from scratch! Learn how to:
Save your Hotmail signature - Restore your signature.

Backup / Save your Hotmail signature

First, login to your Hotmail account, and navigate to your inbox; then, click on the "Options" button, and choose "More options" from the dropdown menu. Click on the "Personal email signature" link on the next screen to access the signature text editor.

You will now be looking at your current signature; by default, it uses "Rich text" format, which allows for advanced text formatting, colors, images, and links. If the "mode" dropdown menu in the editor toolbar reads "Plain text", skip to our tip below.

Click on the Mode dropdown menu in the toolbar, and select "Edit in HTML": this allows you to view the "HTML" code of your Hotmail signature. Select all that code, right-click on your text selection, and choose "Copy" (or use the Ctrl+C keyboard shortcut to copy the code).

Tip: if you are using a "plain text" signature, just highlight the text, right-click on the selection, and choose "Copy".

Now that you have copied your signature, open a text editor of your choice (like Notepad on Windows or SimpleText on Mac OS X), and paste your email signature inside that blank file. Save the file with a meaningful name, in an easy-to-remember location. You are done! (You can now safely delete the signature if you wanted to disable it).

Restore your signature

We assume that you already saved your signature and have access to the file backed up on your PC / Mac. Double-click on the backed up Hotmail signature file; select all the text in it, right-click on the selection and choose "Copy". You can now close the file, sign in to your Hotmail account and go to your inbox. Go to "Options > More options".

Select the "Personal email signature" link on the next screen.

Tip: if you are about to restore an email signature that includes "HTML code" (rich formatting), make sure to choose "Edit in HTML" before pasting into the Hotmail editor - otherwise, your signature will look like gibberish. How do you know if you need to choose the HTML code option? If any portion of your signature block contains opening and closing angular brackets, like "<" and ">".

Now paste the email signature inside the editor, and click on the "Save" button at the bottom of the page. You have successfully restored your Hotmail signature! The next email you send will reflect the change.