Creating custom signatures for an email messages has become standard practice and is a great way to always include contact information with an email. Most people tend to use the basic text signature that includes basic contact information such as name, phone and email at the bottom of an email. But what if the person receiving the email wants to save this information to their contacts without retyping? Electronic business cards to the rescue!

An electronic business card is a custom contact in Outlook that is inserted into the footer of the email and as an attachment. If the receiver wants to save the contact information all they need to do is open the attachment and save. The contact will then be saved to their Outlook contact list.

In order to use an electronic business card in an email in Outlook 2010 a contact needs to be created for the sender in the senders contact list. Any contact can be used as a business card if so desired.

To Create a Contact : 

1. Click on Contacts in the left Navigation Pane

2. From the Home Tab, click on New Contact

3. Enter contact information. This information can include:

   • Full Name (first and last name)

   • Company

   • Job tile

   • E-Mail

   • Web page address

   • Phone numbers (business, home, fax and mobile)

   • Address (business, home, other)

4. When finished click on Save & Close to save the contact

There is a lot information that can be stored within a contact record that should probably not be included in an electronic business card such as home address or personal phone numbers. The electronic business card can be edited to only include the necessary fields from the contact. Additionally other fields can be added to the card and the order of the fields can be changed.

To Organize Fields on the Business Card:

1. Open the contact and then right-click on the business card in the upper right corner

2. Select Edit Business Card

3. In the bottom of the Edit Business Card dialog box is a list of contact fields. Select the field to be removed from the card and click on Remove

4. If there is a field that is not included on the card it can be added by clicking on Add and selecting the field

5. The arrows at the bottom of the Fields box are used to move the order of the fields. Select a field and then move up or down by clicking on either the up or down arrow

6. Click on OK when finished

A business card can be further customized to include an image, different fonts and formatting. Listed below are the instructions for further customizing the card. All instruction assumes that the business card is open for editing.

Add Image to Card:

1. Click on the Change… button next to Image in the Edit Business Card dialog box

2. Browse to the image to be inserted and clock on Open

3. Position the image on the card using the following controls

   • Layout – location of image on card

   • Image Area – size of image

   • Image Align – align the image on the card

4. Click on OK when finished

To remove an image from a card select Text Only from the Layout: dropdown in the Edit Business Card dialog box.

To Change the Font and Font Formatting:

1. Click on the Field to be modified in the Fields box

2. On the left side on the dialog box is the font editing options

3. Modify field formatting as desired

4. Click OK when finished

Using an Electronic Business Card:

There are two methods to include a business card with an email message. The first is to insert the card directly into an email and the second is to include the business card a part of the email signature.

Insert Card into Mail Message:

1. Create a new email message

2. Click on the spot in the message body where the card should be inserted

3. Click on Insert tab

4. Select Business Card and then the card to be inserted

Add Card to Email Signature:

1. Click on File

2. Select Options

3. Select Mail

4. Click on Signatures button next to Create or modify signatures for messages

5. From the Edit Signature Box click on Business Card

6. Scroll to find the card to be inserted, highlight card and click OK