Extra CR or LF after signature

[Leif]

I feel certain this has been asked before in many a forum, but:

If I add a signature at the end of an HTML email, 2 or 3 line feeds or carriage returns are added, even though there are none in the signature itself. This is in outlook 2010, and I'm fairly sure I had the same issue in 2002.

I'm not alone - Outlook Signatures - additional line breaks on manual insertion - Microsoft Community - but there seems no update since February 2013.

Does anyone know of a fix?

[Rudi]

Are you referring to the CR's before or after the signature?

It is intentional in my opinion.
If your cursor is at the end of your email and you insert a signature it will add with one or two CR's so it does not start in the same line as the ending of your email.
Similarly in a new email, the CR's before the sig will allow you to place your cursor a line or two above the sig to start typing.

The CR's at the end of the sig is to avoid the end of the sig running into the "from" details (or tracking detail) of the previous email.

[HansV]

You can remove one of the empty lines below the signature by editing the signature files directly (not in Outlook itself). You can find the files in

C:\Users\<username>\AppData\Roaming\Microsoft\Signatures

But you'll still get two empty paragraphs above and one below the signature. I don't think there is a way to prevent that.

[Leif]

Rudi:
They are added after the signature - and I think I'm old enough to add them myself, either within the signature text or manually after the signature is added, if they are needed

One line for spacing is plenty, and when used in a reply, there is usually a delineating line there anyway. Three blank lines looks like you fell asleep pressing down the <return> key.

The issue I/we have is that our mail-server adds a (legally required) company-details footer at the end of outgoing emails, and it just looks stoopid with unnecessary spacing.

Hans:
Thanks! - I'll have look...

[Leif]

Thanks for the tip, Hans. I found the simplest and best method was to edit (actually re-create) the signature file using an HTML editor. I got preceding spacing down to zero, and following empty lines down by just one, but a vast improvement. The signature file is now 1KB instead of 26KB, and only 3 lines instead of 400+!

[HansV]

Great! (The way Outlook creates the signature is a horrible example of HTML bloat...)