Test your rules before you rely on them
Four checks that catch a rule pointing at the wrong signature before anyone notices in Outlook.
- Last updated
- 4 minute read
- Rules
- Testing
Rules are easy to get nearly right. These checks take a few minutes and catch the mistakes that would otherwise surface as a complaint from the one person nobody expected.
The four checks
- Read the list top to bottom. Highest priority first, fallback last. If the story does not make sense to you, fix the priorities before anything else.
- Pick one person per rule and check them from the Outlook add-in page. That shows which signature they get and the rule that chose it.
- Check someone who matches nothing. They should get your default. If they get something unexpected, a rule is matching more broadly than you thought.
- Check the reach counts. A signature showing 0 people might be a rule that no longer matches anything.
Amelia Hart
Details from Microsoft 365, last synced today.
Display name
Amelia HartJob title
Head of OperationsDepartment
OperationsMobile
+44 7700 900123Her signature today
Amelia Hart
Head of Operations, Halden & Rowe
- +44 20 7946 0321
- amelia.hart@haldenrowe.co.uk
- haldenrowe.co.uk
Open studio
Come and see us on 16 October
Built from Leadership, chosen by the rule Person: Amelia Hart.
The mistakes that come up most
| What you see | Usual cause |
|---|---|
| Everyone gets one unexpected signature | A rule at a high priority matches broadly, often a domain rule that covers the whole company |
| A team is split between two signatures | Some of them are on a different email domain, so the department rule never sees them |
| A rule seems to do nothing | The department was renamed in Microsoft 365 and the rule still has the old name |
| One person is on the wrong signature | A named-person rule for them sits above the team rule, or should sit above it |
Tip: Make one change at a time and check a person after each. Two rules changed together produce a result you cannot explain.
Related articles
- How Signed decides who gets which signatureThe one decision Signed makes on every email: which signature to use. Here is the logic, in order.
- Create a ruleAdding a rule takes about a minute. Here is the order that keeps it predictable.
- Someone has the wrong signatureAlmost always a rule, occasionally a cache. Here is how to tell which in under a minute.
Something here out of date, or a step that did not work? Tell us and we will fix the article. Every page is checked against the running product, so corrections are welcome.