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I'd like to sign my e-mails with a complex signature, including company logo, links to Facebook and other socials and company's website address encoded as QR code, all based on tables.

I have designed my signature in both Word and as pure HTML code, and copied result (document or rendered HTML page's content) directly to Gmail rich signature's editor. I used copy-paste solution, because editor has limited formatting tools and offers no direct HTML code editing.

I spent over two hours on forcing Gmail to do this and failed, ending up with using screenshot of my signature as non-clickable image.

In most cases spaces between elements are incorrect, line heights are wrong (to big) etc. Plus: images are not copied from source and when I upload them, they appear in an enormous sizes, completely ignoring sizes and dimensions of underlying table skeleton.

Most important (and irritating in the same time) -- all these problems appears only in e-mail body, after Gmail has pasted my signature. Signatures pasted to signature editor are very good and matches source in nearly all details.

What am I missing? How signature can be pasted without any formatting problems to signature editor and appear completely distorted after Gmail adds it to actual e-mail? Is there any solution?

Note, that I'm talking about using Gmail and its signature editor only. I know, that I can handle my e-mail account with some external mail client like Thunderbird or Outlook Express and can attach pure HTML code as my perfectly rendered signature there. But, that's not a point in this case.

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If the signature includes complex formatting, the layout may break during the copy-paste. Since you already have the HTML code of the signature, go to ctrlq.org/html-mail, switch to the HTML mode, paste the HTML of the signature and send an email to yourself.

This uses the Gmail API to send the mail and thus the layout should be preserved. Once you have the email in Gmail, copy the signature block and paste it into your settings window.

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    I don't have HTML source, only document written in Word, based on tables. However, your idea wit using html-mail does sound reasonable and like an interesting one. I'm going to investigate it further, but I'm accepting your answer for bringing this up. Thank you.
    – trejder
    Mar 11, 2015 at 13:26
  • Actually your question said - " have designed my signature in both Word and as pure HTML code" so I thought you would have the HTML source. Anyway, the HTML Mail app has a WYSIWYG editor as well so you can design the sigature as well. Mar 11, 2015 at 14:04
  • Sorry, for the confusion. Yes, and their editor looks like a much more flexible than Gmail's one (for example -- has a lot of stuff for tables).
    – trejder
    Mar 11, 2015 at 14:09

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