How to Add Email Disclaimers in Office 365

Are you looking for information on how to add email disclaimers in Office 365? If yes, this article will show you how it’s done. We have previously written a post in which we discussed email disclaimers and whether or not they are necessary. We noted back then that they are meant to protect your company in case there is a data breach. These breaches can be caused by various factors, including malware and employee error. But how can you add a company-wide, global email disclaimer in Microsoft 365? Read the rest of this post to find out. 

You should make your disclaimer companywide

One thing that we need to point out here is that your email disclaimer needs to be companywide to make it effective. But what does that mean? It means you need to make sure that a disclaimer is displayed on all emails that are sent by all employees from within your organization. 

It won’t do to have the disclaimer only added for a few employees. If you do that, you will still be open to litigation should unforeseen circumstances lead to data breaches. That’s the reason why we have chosen to show you how to set up Office 365 email disclaimers on a global level; for everyone within your company. 

What permissions do you require?

Not everyone is going to be able to create disclaimers within your company’s Microsoft 365 admin dashboard. In order to do this, you need to have Organization Management permissions. There is a good reason for this; if every user is able to play around with email disclaimers, it’s probably going to lead to chaos. Anyway, disclaimers can be set via the Exchange Online Portal or through Powershell. 

Setting up your email disclaimer in Microsoft 365

 The following is how to add email disclaimers in Office 365; 

1. Sign in to the Microsoft 365 admin console.
2. Click on Exchange near the bottom of the left menu. 
3. Next, click on mail flow. 
4. Click on the + button to add a new element. 
5. From the dropdown elements, click on Apply disclaimers. 
6. Now you will need to type in a name for the rule. 
7. Click on the dropdown on Apply this rule if; and choose Apply to all messages. 
8.  Below that you will see the Do the following dropdown. Make sure that Append the disclaimer is displayed. 
9. Click on Enter text. 
10. Type in your disclaimer text. This is the message that will be added to every email that is sent out from your company for all employees. Your text can be formatted via HTML to improve how it looks. You can also use a URL to include an image in your signature. 
11. When done, click on the OK button. 
12. You will need to select a fallback option to ensure that your signature works with encrypted emails. Scroll down and click on Select one, then Wrap. Click on the OK button. 
13. Make sure the mode for your rule is set to enforce. Now click on the Save button. 
14. Click on Yes to apply the rule to all future messages. 

What happens after you have set up your disclaimer?

That’s how to add email disclaimers in Microsoft 365. But what happens after you have created your disclaimer? 

When you or other people within your company, send emails, you won’t actually see the disclaimer. It will only be displayed for people receiving your emails. It will be at the bottom of the message. 

Challenges when creating email disclaimers in Microsoft 365

You may have noticed that it’s not very difficult to add an email disclaimer in Microsoft 365. Moreover, the disclaimers that you add can be set as global, meaning they will apply to every email that is sent out from your organization. However, there are a couple of challenges when managing disclaimers directly via Microsoft 365. 

For one thing, there is not very much that you can do to make the disclaimer appear professional and well crafted. We have already noted that you can use HTML elements to format it and include an image, but you are not going to do that much this way. So, what can you do to improve things? 

Solutions

But what are the solutions? What do you do if you wish to really get professional-looking email signatures, including disclaimers, for your company? The solution lies in engaging the services of a third party such as Crossware. 

We are one of the world’s most trusted email signature providers. We specialize in Microsoft 365, Microsoft Exchange and HCL Domino. If you need to create professional-looking companywide signatures that bring consistency to your emails, you need to hire our services. Get in touch today to learn more!

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