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 Windows OS Hub / Outlook / Fix: “Signature” Button Not Working in Outlook 2013/2016

May 15, 2019 OutlookWindows 10

Fix: “Signature” Button Not Working in Outlook 2013/2016

Several times I have come across a bug in different Outlook versions when the “Signatures” button doesn’t work. No matter how many times you click it, the Signatures window won’t appear.

This time the bug appeared on Windows 10 with the newly installed RTM version of Outlook 2016. After clicking the Signatures button in the File -> Options -> Mail, nothing happened and the signature didn’t appear.

I tried to repair, remove and reinstall Office, cleanup the registry – but nothing helped. How to set a user Outlook signature in this case?

Signature option does not open in outlook 2016

In one of the previous articles we told how to setup an Outlook signature based on user information from Active Directory. There we mentioned that in Windows 10, 8.1 and 7 the files with Outlook signatures are located in the user profile folder %APPDATA%\Microsoft\Signatures (C:\Users\username\AppData\Roaming\Microsoft\Signatures). So if you create an HTML/RTF/TXT file with the signature text and save it in the specified directory, you can insert your signature using the corresponding button in the Outlook 2016 interface when creating a new email or replying (Outlook must be restarted).

inssert signature in outlook 2016 manually

But it is quite inconvenient since each time you have to press the ‘Signature’ button manually. You can assign this file as a default Outlook signature through the registry. To do it, remove the First-Run parameter in registry key HKCU\Software\Microsoft\Office\<Office Version>\Outlook\Setup and create 2 string (REG_SZ) values: NewSignature and ReplySignature in the reg key HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Office\16.0\Common\MailSettings (for Outlook 2016). Specify the full path to the signature file as the values of these parameters.

However, this fix is inconvenient and not flexible.

There is a description of a similar bug in Windows 10 on support.office.com. To solve the problem of the Signatures button that is not working, it is recommend to uninstall a modern app Microsoft Office Desktop App (Settings -> Apps -> Apps & Features).

remove Microsoft Office Desktop App

If it hasn’t helped, I have found some opinions on technical forums that the signature issue often appears after mailbox migration to the another domain or on computers with the preinstalled Office.

In order to make the Signatures button work, try the following:

In these registry keys (for x64 and x86 Office editions respectively) change the values of the Default and LocalServer32 parameters to the full path to the outlook.exe executable file on your computer (for example, to C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft Office\Office16\Outlook.exe for Outlook 2016):

  • HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Classes\Wow6432Node\CLSID\{0006F03A-0000-0000-C000-000000000046}\LocalServer32
  • HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Classes\CLSID\{0006F03A-0000-0000-C000-000000000046}\LocalServer32

LocalServer32 - fix outlook signature button not opened

If this method hasn’t helped, try to use this REG file (for Office 2016 and Office 365):

Windows Registry Editor Version 5.00
[HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\Outlook.Application]
@="Microsoft Outlook 16.0 Object Library"
[HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\Outlook.Application\CLSID]
@="{0006F03A-0000-0000-C000-000000000046}"
[HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\Outlook.Application\CurVer]
@="Outlook.Application.16"
[HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\Outlook.Application.16]
@="Microsoft Outlook 16.0 Object Library"
[HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\Outlook.Application.16\CLSID]
@="{0006F03A-0000-0000-C000-000000000046}"
[HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\Wow6432Node\CLSID\{0006F03A-0000-0000-C000-000000000046}]
[HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\Wow6432Node\CLSID\{0006F03A-0000-0000-C000-000000000046}\InprocServer32]
"Assembly"="Microsoft.Office.Interop.Outlook, Version=16.0.0.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=71E9BCE111E9429C"
"Class"="Microsoft.Office.Interop.Outlook.ApplicationClass"
"RuntimeVersion"="v2.0.50727"
[HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\Wow6432Node\CLSID\{0006F03A-0000-0000-C000-000000000046}\InprocServer32\16.0.0.0]
"Assembly"="Microsoft.Office.Interop.Outlook, Version=16.0.0.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=71E9BCE111E9429C"
"Class"="Microsoft.Office.Interop.Outlook.ApplicationClass"
"RuntimeVersion"="v2.0.50727"
[HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\Wow6432Node\CLSID\{0006F03A-0000-0000-C000-000000000046}\LocalServer32]
@="C:\\Program Files\\Microsoft Office\\Office16\\OUTLOOK.EXE"
[HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\Wow6432Node\CLSID\{0006F03A-0000-0000-C000-000000000046}\ProgID]
@="Outlook.Application.16"
[HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\Wow6432Node\CLSID\{0006F03A-0000-0000-C000-000000000046}\Typelib]
@="{00062FFF-0000-0000-C000-000000000046}"

If signature problem occurs in Office 2010, replace 16 with 14; if in Outlook 2013, replace 16 with 15.

13 comments
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13 comments

Luis August 2, 2019 - 7:37 am

THANK YOUUUUU 🙂
I was struggling with this for so many time, and now it’s fixed.
I had to unistall the Microsoft Office Desktop App and that was it 🙂 Done.

Thanks

Reply
Randjana Ramharakh August 2, 2019 - 11:15 am

remove Microsoft Office Desktop App fixed it too for me. And i was able too to send mail from excel

Reply
Sean August 12, 2019 - 8:15 pm

I didn’t have the Microsoft Office Desktop App on my computer so I had to do the registry edit method and…. it worked perfectly!
Thank you very much for posting!

Reply
Emmanuel August 26, 2019 - 11:19 am

THANK YOU SO MUCH

It doesn’t take me time, I uninstall the Microsoft Office Desktop App and I am working now.

Reply
Richard Marshall January 24, 2020 - 8:35 am

none of the above works

when i try to locate the HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Classes\Wow6432Node\CLSID\{0006F03A-0000-0000-C000-000000000046}\LocalServer32
it does not show up in the available options and i cannot copy and insert the Default and LocalServer32 registry files as per requirements stated above
Have to say this is a major failure for microsoft

Reply
ANJarrad July 11, 2020 - 4:20 am

two weeks cannot fix this issue, its now July 2020, and they guys at Microsoft Help Desk are proving to be worthless.

Now I am going to try to uninstall office, manually delete all reminants of it on my computer, including all pst/ost files and request they provide me a different version to download then the standard one, see what happens.

Reply
Paul Odendaal May 22, 2020 - 7:30 am

Congratulations. You are the only one on the web who knows how to fix this.

Reply
Parag Agarwal September 14, 2020 - 7:02 am

Thank you! deleting microsoft office desktop apps worked for me. I am using outlook 2016 on windows 10 (x64)

Reply
Segun Phillips September 21, 2020 - 1:04 pm

Thank you! Uninstalling Microsoft Office desktop apps worked for me.

Reply
benjamin October 22, 2020 - 7:31 am

תודה רבה מכל הלב!

Reply
Northern November 18, 2020 - 3:53 pm

Brilliant solution, worked for me. Thanks very much.

Reply
Nansal January 5, 2021 - 7:07 am

Thanks, Your given solution working fine

Reply
Alex February 11, 2021 - 12:46 pm

Thank you! MODA was not present on my computer, the only thing that got it working was the reg file! Amazing!

Reply

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