Setup integration with Apple Mail

Apple Mail does not allow you to insert raw HTML code directly into your signature, so we have to use some tricks to add the Nicereply Rating Link to your signature.

Create a new signature

Let’s go to  Mail > Preferences > Signatures and click "+" button. Set e.g. "Nicereply" name to your signature and add just your full name to your new email signature. My email signature now looks like this:

New Apple Mail signature

At this point we need to close Preferences and quit the Mail application.

Find your mail signature file

You know Apple, they love to play hide & seek, so we have to find your new signature file hidden in your Library folder. Open the Finder, click on the Go menu, and hold the Alt/Option key down. You will see the "Library" folder. Choose that Library folder, and navigate to one of the following folders:

  • If you’re using iCloud, go to ~/Library/Mobile Documents/com~apple~mail/Data/MailData/Signatures/
  • If not using iCloud, head to ~/Library/Mail/V2/MailData/Signatures/ or ~/Library/Mail/V3/MailData/Signatures/ if you are using El Capitan or newer

In the Signatures folder you should easily recognise your signature file by the Date Modified:

Email signature file

Edit the signature

Right click on the signature file  Open with > Other… and choose TextEdit application. Take a deep breath and don’t worry. You don’t need to understand this "Chinese soup". I will guide you through, step-by-step.

Your signature file will open in TextEdit and should look similar to mine:

Email signature code

Correct the signature headers

If the first line of your signature file does not contain " 7bit", please change the first line to:

Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit

If you’d like to use non-english (non-ASCII) characters, make sure your 3rd line is set to " utf-8" too:

Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Content-Type: text/html; 	charset=utf-8

Replace the signature body code

Let’s replace the mess of characters with some nice HTML code. Replace the rest of the signature code, starting on line #7 with with "<body", by this basic HTML template:

<body style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0); letter-spacing: normal; orphans: auto; text-align: start; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; widows: auto; word-spacing: 0px; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; word-wrap: break-word; -webkit-nbsp-mode: space; -webkit-line-break: after-white-space; font-family: sans-serif;">     <p>         <strong>How nice was my reply?</strong><br class="Apple-interchange-newline">         <!-- Place your Nicereply Rating link code here -->     </p>     <p>         <strong>Your Name</strong><br class="Apple-interchange-newline">         <a href="mailto:your.email@example.com">your.email@example.com</a> | +1 000 000 000 | <a href="http://www.example.com">example.com</a>     </p> </body>

Place the Nicereply Rating link in signature

Now login to Nicereply and head up to Ratings(CSAT) > Rating Page Settings > Rating Link, copy your Rating links code and paste it into your mail signature (replace the comment) and save the file. The source code of your signature should now be similar to this one:

Email signature with new code

And in an email it would appear like this:

Basic signature appearance

Edit the signature template details

These last two pictures will help you understand the details of the HTMl template we’ve used. At this point you can edit the template code:

  • Edit the "How nice was my reply?" question,
  • Replace "Your Name" placeholder with your real name,
  • Replace "your.email@example.com" with your real email – twice!,
  • Edit/delete the phone number and,
  • Edit/delete the website URL "http://www.example.com" and link text "example.com"

Of course you may delete the whole second block <p>…</p> and make some other magic with the HTML code of your signature.

Save and lock mail signature file

When you are finished, Save the mail signature file and lock the file (otherwise Apple mail will destroy everything you‘ve done). Click on the arrow in the header bezel of TextEdit and lock the mail signature file:

Congratulations! You are now an Apple Mail Signature Guru.

Close the TextEdit window, open Apple mail and check your signature in Mail > Preferences. The images may be missing in Preferences, but don’t worry- try to send an email to yourself or a colleague. Everything should be fine in a real email message:

PS: If you would like to edit your new signature you should:

  1. Quit Apple Mail,
  2. open the mail signature file with TextEdit from the Library folder,
  3. unlock the file,
  4. make changes to the code,
  5. save, lock and close the file