How to set Outlook 2010 to use signatures outside of the default signature folder?

With Outlook before the 2010 version, it was possible to specify any path for the signatures.
With Outlook 2010, the only way is to use those stored into C:\Documents and Setting\UserName\Local Settings\Application Datas\Microsoft\Signature\

I'd like to point the signatures to a network share. Allowing us to modify the signatures into the share, instead of login on every computers each time we are asked to modify them (and this is quite often because the signatures contain logos about current events).

We currently use a script to copy the signatures from the share to the local disk when users login.

Outlook will always look in your user profile for the signatures folder the only way around that is to use NTFS links or some trickery.

The registry key that defines where to look for the Outlook signature is

HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Office\14.0\Common\General\Signatures

By default, this value is set to Signatures, meaning, Outlook will look for the folder Signatures in %APPDATA%\Microsoft\.

Now, we can just change that key to something else and Outlook will look in a different folder for the signatures.

And there's my changed signature:

Awesome! But I want a totally different folder!

Traversing directories seems to work fine:

However, if you want to reference content from a different drive, it might be best to just create a join/link.

I think you could probably put a symbolic link to the network path you wanted, in place of the folder. Something like:

cd "C:\Documents and Setting\UserName\Local Settings\Application Datas\Microsoft\"
rmdir Signatures
mklink /D Signatures \\network_path_to_signatures

Now, if you cd to Signatures, you should end up in the network path. Any programs that encounter it treat it like a directory.

Tested it with Outlook 2010 and 2013.

The path to the signature folder is hard coded into Outlook. The only thing you can do is change where the users AppData folder is located and that will in turn move where Outlook looks for the signature folder. If you do this, you will in essence make everyone's copy of Microsoft Office the same. If one person adds a quick launch shortcut, it will appear in everyone's screen since they all use the same folder to store data.

HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer\Shell Folders

I personally like you using the macro to do the job. It only adds seconds to the login time for the user.