Can't add signatures in Mail!!!

Squashua84,

All good ideas. I went ahead and tried all of your steps from above – several times I might add. But to no avail...

However, I did find a kludgey workaround while I was experimenting that may help others.

First off though, one thing I noticed different was my mail folder was ~/Library/Mail/V3, whereas your folder was named "V2." Not sure if that means anything or not.

After trying all of your steps above, and failing, I accidentally came across a solution. First off, I deleted my Signatures folder to start fresh. Create my 4 signatures, plus 3 extra "dummy" signatures to play with. I normally only have 4 signatures in my mail, but I wanted to experiment with more.

By accident, I discovered that when I added all 7 signatures to all 6 of my mail accounts, BAM, the signatures all of the sudden showed up in the signature dropdown of my "problem" account. What the heck?

I also discovered that if I went back and started removing the extra test signatures from the other good accounts, that at some point (usually after the second account paring back to 2 signatures), I would discover that the "problem" email account now only shows 1 of the 7 signatures that are associated with it. Very very odd. Then after paring down the rest of the extra signatures from my good accounts, all signatures dissapeared from my "problem" account's dropdown. I know, this makes no sense at all.

So then I went back again and just added all 7 signatures, including my dummy test ones, back to all 6 of my accounts, and voila, there was my signature dropdown selections on my "problem" account. Not ideal, but at least now I have signature options.

Lastly, even though now I have signatures available to the "problem" account, there is still one bug with it. Even if I set a default signature for it, it will NEVER show the default signature when I start a new email, I still have to manually choose it from the signature dropdown. All 5 of my other accounts correctly show the default signature I set in preferences when I start a new email. Small consolation I guess is that at least I can pick the signature from the dropdown menus now for the problem account.

This is the strangest and most erratic behavior I have ever seen? It's almost like there is some weird low level corruption on that email account. But I cannot fathom how the above steps I took "kind of" solved part of my problem. Very very strange indeed.

Hopefully this will help someone else in my situation, solve their problem.

-- Jon

I also am having the same issue with Mac mail. This all occurred after migrating mail from an old iMac running 10.6.8 to a new 27" 5K iMac running the latest El Capitain 10.11.3.

I have 6 mail accounts for my business, and only one of them (unfortunately my main account) will not work with signatures, no matter what I do. All other accounts that have signatures work fine and I can add, delete, and tweak them to my heart's content.

I've deleted all signatures from all accounts, and recreated them. Added all 8 signatures to my problem account and checked and unchecked every option available to try and trick this into working. I even tried Linc's advice of removing the 2 different directories, but nothing seems to work.

There must be something funky with the email account itself for it to be unable to save or use signatures. I am including some screenshots to show the problem. Second shot shows composing a new email and the frustrating "None" that I see as my selection options even though I have 8 signatures added to that account.

Any other ideas out there?

Thanks for using Apple Support Community.

Go into mail preferences

Click on the the signatures tab

select the account you want to have the signature

Click on the drop menu at the bottom of the window and select the signature to always use

Close the prefs (it might ask you to save the setting)

And open a new email, the sig should now be there

http://matt.coneybeare.me/how-to-make-an-html-signature-in-apple-mail-for-el-cap itan-os-x-10-dot-11/

Please take these steps to delete the Mail "sandbox" folders.

Step 1

Back up all data.

Triple-click anywhere in the line below on this page to select it:

~/Library/Containers/com.apple.mail

Right-click or control-click the highlighted line and select

Services ▹ Reveal

from the contextual menu.* A Finder window should open with a folder named "com.apple.mail" selected. If it does, move the selected folder—not just its contents—to the Desktop. Leave the Finder window open for now.

Restart the computer. Launch Mail and test. If the problem is resolved, you may have to recreate some of your Mail settings. Any custom stationery that you created may be lost. Ask for instructions if you want to preserve that data. You can then delete the folder you moved and close the Finder window.

Caution: If you change any of the contents of the sandbox, but leave the folder itself in place, Mail may crash or not launch at all. Deleting the whole sandbox will cause it to be rebuilt automatically.

Step 2

If Step 1 doesn't solve the problem, repeat with this line:

~/Library/Containers/com.apple.MailServiceAgent

*If you don't see the contextual menu item, copy the selected text to the Clipboard by pressing the key combination command-C. In the Finder, select

Go ▹ Go to Folder...

from the menu bar and paste into the box that opens by pressing command-V. You may not see what you pasted because a line break is included. Press return.

Hi,

I had similar issues before, I found out, that you have to go into Preferences/Signatures and you see your signature. The reason why you did not find it in your mail might be that the assignment to your accounts might be lost. Go into it and drage & drop your signature onto your account, in all doubts, do it with all accounts showing.

Make further sure, that the box "Place signature above quoted text" ist ticked. Otherwise you may be able to see the signature in the pull down menu in the email but you cannot use it in case of answering or forwarding. Don´t ask me for the sense of the text but it works.

Your might than still face the issue, that you cannot add the signature while answering to all mails, in some mails, you can add it but in case of some mails (at least in my case) you cannot add a signature if you are answering. I works with forwarding but not with answering. I don´t know why, it is maybe a bug. I will raise this question soon.

Good luck, René

Here is what I did to solve issue of signatures not saving.

First I went to: Library ▸ Mail ▸ V2 ▸ MailData

and there was no Folder Named "Signatures" so I created a Folder Named "Signatures"

Second restarted The Mail App. when I did that, a AccountsMap.plist file appeared in the "Signatures" folder.

Third I duplicated the AccountsMap.plist file and renamed it SignaturesByAccount.plist opened the file and deleted the contents, and saved it.

Fourth opened Mail and added signature to email account and exited Mail and reopened it,

and the Signature saved.

Then I Looked back in the Signatures folder and Two more files had appeared

1) 4F9ED2E7-0676-4B0A-9B8C-1F1015C71839.mailsignature

2) AllSignatures.plist

Guessing some bug was preventing the file structure to build on its own. But with a little finagling looks to be all fixed now

Hopefully this Helps

, Josh

Great Answer Jon,

The 7 signatures to all accounts seemed to work for me also to show the signatures in the choose signature box, but likewise, no auto insertion of the signature in new mails and replies.

Jon this worked.. very bizarre. added 7 signatures and now they all work. thanks

Great answer, and this worked on my Macbook Pro. Thank you!