Your signature is a small piece of web page, and every mail app draws it again with its own rules. The one you send from changes it when you paste it in, and the one the recipient reads with changes it again. A logo without a fixed width takes the size of the image file, spacing built from blank lines collapses, and links with no color of their own get the app's default. A signature built as one table, with the styles written on each element and images given a set width, survives most of those rules.
Three threads, one complaint
On May 19, 2026, a small business owner on r/businessemail described two hours spent on a basic signature: name, business name, an Instagram link and a small logo. "The logo looked normal on my laptop but massive on my phone. One email app destroyed the spacing. Another turned all my links blue and underlined everything like it was 2008. Then I replied to an email and the whole thing looked even worse."
In March, someone on r/Outlook made a signature for a client in an online generator. It looked right on the website and lost its formatting in Outlook: "all the nice formatting/spacing is gone", and the social media icons "disappear and turn into plain hyperlinks once pasted".
On r/smallbusiness, a nonprofit on Microsoft 365 found its signature worked between Outlook users but looked "all jumbled up" when it reached someone on Gmail, after rebuilding it four times. The thread was still getting answers in March 2026.
Five places a signature gets redrawn
The paste. A signature box keeps only what its editor understands. In Outlook 2007, Microsoft moved Outlook on Windows to Word's engine for both writing and displaying email, and its Outlook team wrote at the time that "there are some HTML and CSS attributes that aren't currently supported by Word's rendering engine". A design that relies on them gets simplified when it is pasted into a Word-based editor, a likely place for the icons and spacing in the r/Outlook thread to go.
The recipient's app. Gmail styles email from the CSS it supports and says in its CSS documentation that it "might ignore unsupported CSS properties and selectors". In its signature troubleshooting page, Google also says that "sometimes Gmail doesn't correctly display formatted text in a signature".
Images with no set size. An image without a width in its own tag shows at the size of the file, which is how a sharp logo made for a big screen fills a phone. Google recommends a signature image 70-100 pixels high by 300-400 pixels wide, with a maximum of 100 pixels high by 1,000 wide.
Links with no color of their own. A link without a color written on it takes the app's default style, often blue and underlined. Give each link its own color in the signature and most apps keep it.
Replies. In a reply, your signature sits inside a longer message, sometimes below the quoted text or behind Gmail's "Show trimmed content" button.
How to build one that holds up
- One table for the layout. Put the logo or photo in one cell and your details in the next. A table keeps them side by side in Outlook, Gmail and phone apps, where floating boxes and columns tend to fall apart.
- Styles on each element. Write the font, size and color on each piece of text and each link. Apps that drop style sheets keep styles written inline.
- A width on every image. Set the width in pixels on the image itself, at the size you want it shown.
- Images at a web address. Host the logo online and link to it. A pasted image can arrive as an attachment or be stripped.
- Fewer pieces. Each banner, badge or icon is one more thing an app can redraw. Text links for social profiles survive everywhere.
- Paste it as formatted content, from a browser, straight into the signature box.
- Test where your recipients read. Send one email to a Gmail address, one to an Outlook address and one to a phone, and reply to one of them.
A signature built in that shape
Signatoro's free generator makes the signature in that shape, with no account: one table with inline styles, a photo or logo hosted at a public web address with a fixed pixel width, in any of five layouts. "Copy signature" copies it formatted, the form a signature box expects. "Send me a test" emails it to you with the install steps for your mail app, so you can check it on your phone before anyone else sees it.
The paste steps for each mail app are in the install guides: Gmail, new Outlook, classic Outlook, Apple Mail and iPhone Mail, with the rest on the install guides page.
Questions
Why does my logo look huge on my phone?
The image has no width set in the signature, so the phone shows it at the size of the file. Resize the image before you add it, or use a signature that sets the width in pixels.
Why did my social icons turn into plain links in Outlook?
Most likely the icons were built in a way Outlook's editor doesn't keep, so only the links underneath survived the paste. Icons that are ordinary images, hosted online and linked, usually paste as images, and text links paste everywhere.
Why does my signature look fine in Outlook but jumbled in Gmail?
Outlook and Gmail support different sets of HTML and CSS. A signature saved by Outlook can carry formatting Gmail ignores. A simple table with inline styles reads the same in both.
Why does my signature look worse in replies?
In a reply, it sits inside the quoted conversation, and each app styles that differently. Gmail may also hide it behind "Show trimmed content". Check one reply when you test.
Is a plain-text signature safer?
It looks the same everywhere, and you lose the logo and the layout. For a team that wants its logo, a table-based HTML signature is the middle ground. Keep a plain-text copy for apps that take only text.
Sources
Read on November 2, 2026:
- Why is setting up an email signature such a nightmare if you are not using Outlook or Gmail? (r/businessemail, May 2026)
- Looking for advice/help with an email signature!! (r/Outlook, March 2026)
- How do I get email signature made that plays nice with Outlook and Gmail? (r/smallbusiness, April 2025, replies to March 2026)
- Troubleshoot issues with Gmail signatures (Gmail Help)
- CSS support (Gmail, Google for Developers)
- On Word & Outlook 2007 (Microsoft Learn archive, January 2007)