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Electronic Business Cards (Electronic Business Card: A view of specific information about a contact, in a format similar to a paper-based business card, that can be inserted into messages.) make sharing contact information easier. They can quickly be inserted into messages that you send and are immediately recognizable by the recipient. You can send your corporate Electronic Business Card or a personal one that you customized. Or you can send someone else's contact information as an Electronic Business Card. You can also forward the cards or include your card in a signature that is automatically included in outgoing messages. In each case, in an HTML-based message, the person who receives your message gets a visible identifier to quickly save as a contact.

• How Electronic Business Cards appear to recipients

• Insert an Electronic Business Card in a message

• Include an Electronic Business Card in your e-mail signature

How Electronic Business Cards appear to recipients

People who use Microsoft Office Outlook 2007  see the Electronic Business Card in the message, represented just as you sent it. The recipient can right-click the card and save the information to Outlook Contacts.

People with earlier versions of Outlook or other e-mail applications who use HTML to view e-mail  also see the Electronic Business Card in their message. These cards are images only, however. Recipients also receive an attached .vcf file that contains the card's information. They can open the .vcf file and save that information to their contact lists.

People who view their e-mail in plain text  won't see an image of the Electronic Business Card in the message, but they receive the .vcf file attachment, which contains the contact information that they can save to their contact lists.

Double-clicking the attached .vcf file opens the contact form (contact form: A view of an individual contact that contains all the information stored in the contact.), which can then be saved to the recipient's contact list.

Insert an Electronic Business Card in a message

1. In a new message, on the Message tab, in the Include group, click Business Card, and then click a name in the list.
2. If you don't see the name that you want, click Other Business Cards, click the name in the Filed As list, and then click OK.

  Notes  

• The Business Card menu shows the last 10 contact names that were inserted as Electronic Business Cards in messages.
• You can insert more than one Electronic Business Card in a message.
• To help distinguish between duplicate names on the Business Card menu, click Other Business Cards. You see more information, including a card preview, in the Insert Business Card dialog box.
• If you drag a business card from Business Cards view into a new message, only a .vcf file is included when the message is sent. This attached .vcf file opens the contact form with all the information that the recipients can save to their contact lists. If a recipient is using Office Outlook 2007, the Electronic Business Card is visible in the contact form.

Include an Electronic Business Card in your e-mail signature

By adding your Electronic Business Card to your e-mail signature, you can automatically include your contact information in each message that you send. You can also have a signature that contains only an Electronic Business Card. Recipients can right-click the card in the signature (or right-click the .vcf file) to save it directly to their contacts list.

 When you send a message with a signature that includes an Electronic Business Card, a .vcf file is attached that contains all the contact information. This enables recipients with other e-mail applications to view and save the contact information.

 The Electronic Business Card is displayed in the signature.

 When you right-click the card image in the signature and click Add to Contacts, the contact form opens for that contact. Then you can view it or save it.

• More about Electronic Business Cards in signatures

• Create a signature and include an Electronic Business Card

• Insert a signature in a message

More about Electronic Business Cards in signatures

You can have as many signatures and as many Electronic Business Cards as you want, so you can create multiple signatures for a variety of purposes, such as business, family communications, and more.

For example, perhaps your company policy states that all employees must include their basic contact information in company e-mail correspondence. After the company designates a card design, employees can fill in their contact information, include the card in their official company signatures, and have the signatures automatically added to each message they send from their business e-mail account.

To include signatures with Electronic Business Cards in messages, you must first create the signature and then insert it into the messages. You can manually insert a signature in each message or designate a default signature to be automatically inserted into every message that you send.

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Create a signature and include an Electronic Business Card

1. In a new message, on the Message tab, in the Include group, click Signature, and then click Signatures.
2. On the E-mail Signature tab, click New.
3. Type a name for the signature, and then click OK.
4. In the Edit Signature box, type the text that you want to include in the signature.
5. To format the text, select the text, and then use the style and formatting buttons to select the options that you want.

    Note   These options are not available if you use plain text as your message format.

6. To add an Electronic Business Card, place your insertion point where you want the card to appear in the signature text, click Business Card, and then click a contact name on the Filed As list. Then click OK.
7. To add a picture, place your insertion point where you want the picture to appear in the signature text, click Insert Picture, choose an image, and then click OK.
8. To add a hyperlink, place your insertion point where you want the link to appear in the signature text, click Insert Hyperlink, choose a hyperlink, and then click OK.
9. Under Choose default signature, in the E-mail Account list, click an e-mail account with which you always want to associate the signature.
10. In the New messages list:
    • If you want a signature automatically inserted in each message that is sent from the e-mail account that you choose, select a signature in the list.
    • If you do not want a signature automatically inserted in each message that is sent, select none in the list.

       Note   You can also insert signatures manually in individual messages.

11. If you want a signature included in message replies and in forwarded messages, in the Replies/forwards list, select a signature. If not, select none.
12. After you finish creating the signature, click OK.

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Insert a signature in a message

You can set a default signature to be inserted into all your outgoing messages, or you can insert a signature manually into outgoing messages on an individual basis

Do one of the following:

• Insert a signature automatically

  1. In a new message, on the Message tab, in the Include group, click Signature, and then click Signatures.
  2. On the E-mail Signature tab, in the Select signature to edit list, select the signature that you want.
  3. Under Choose default signature, in the New messages list, select the signature that you want.
  4. If you want a signature to be included in message replies and in forwarded messages, in the Replies/forwards list, select the signature. If not, select none.
  5. Click OK.

• Insert a signature manually

  1. In a new message, on the Message tab, in the Include group, click Signature, and then select the signature that you want.
  2. If you don't see the signature that you want, click E-mail Signature, select the signature name in the Select signature to edit list, and click OK.
  3. In the message, click Signature, and then select the name of the signature.

Download free electronic business card templates  Use the professionally designed card templates on Office Online or get ideas for designing your own.  You can also find printable and Community-submitted card designs.