Outlook '07 vs Feedburner

I've recently switched over to Outlook '07, and if you ask me it rocks. But the romance wore off quickly when I discovered I couldn't use Feedburner's Headline Animator as an Outlook signature. I searched all over and yet everyone says it can't be done... everyone but Dustin that is. Yes, Dustin knew the answer and showed it to me... so I'm showing you.

Assuming you already have the feedburner code for your headline animator (if not go to the publicize tab of your feedburner feed and choose Headline Animator- come back here when you get your code), let's get started.

The first thing we need to do is set some options in Windows Explorer so you can get to the files you need. So right click on the Start Button and choose Explore. Now go to the Tools drop down menu and choose Folder Options

Select Show hidden files and folders.

Also clear the checkbox labeled Hide Extensions for known file types.

Click OK and minimize Windows Explorer.

Now we're ready to do some real work.

Open Outlook '07 and go into the Signature window.
Click New and name it feedburner.

Now depending what you're plan for your signature is, what you do next is up to you. If all you want is Headline Animator then you're done here- just click ok, but for me I wanted to add some text to go along with the Headline Animator. Since Feedburner uses Verdana as a font I selected that and size 8 for my text.

Now save and close.

If you just want the headline animator and nothing else in your signature the open the Windows Explorer window again and navigate to this folder:

C:\Documents and Settings\username\Application Data\Microsoft\Signatures

Where the username in red is your username.

Now you should see a file called feedburner.htm, right click on it and select "open with" and choose notepad. You'll find there is an incredible about of stuff in here. Highlight it all and hit delete. Now cut and paste your feedburner code into notepad and save.

Since I wanted to add some text to it, I opened my favorite html editor and navigated to the path above and opened the feedburner.htm file. I went to the bottom of the file and right below the </DIV> tag I pasted my feedburner code and saved the file.

Outlook will do a rather flaky thing now, if you have more than one Signature, set this one as your default, and change to the other, also make certain that you close Outlook and comeback in or else you'll find that it will squash your feedburner animator, like the one on the left.

 

Comments

[Rick Klau]

Wow, Ed - thanks for the great overview! This will be a big help to a lot of Outlook users.

--Rick Klau
VP, Publisher Services
FeedBurner

[deannie]

Let me understand what this just did for you: is that showing a link to your current blog post in your email signature?

[Ed Buford]

Yes it will post scroll through the last 5 blog posts!

[deannie]

Nice. Must investigate further. Thanks for sharing Ed.

[Jonathan Andre Wolter]

Thanks Ed!

This is great, we appreciate you sharing your tip.

Jonathan
FeedBurner Engineering

[Mike Gemmell]

Ed, I appreciate your tips on how to get this to work in Outlook 07, your's is the first post that addresses that squeezing issue that's been driving me nuts. I have it working now but it's not scrolling. Is there a trick to get this animated and not just have it show the first headline?

[Ed Buford]

Alex,

I know it doesn't scroll in 07 - however if you send it to someone who's not using 07 they will see it scrolling.

I was going to spend some time and figure out what 07 is doing and disable it.... but no one else is going do that, so I decided not to spend my time on it.

Ed

[Alex Fetcher]

Great site!02abc9e6bba2b6973839f749f6fc7999

[Jay Oatway]

Just a quick thought on how we might do this an easier way: (assuming you already have your signature code)

1) create new signature, then select insert picture.

2) insert the img url from your signature code (the bit that follows

[Jay Oatway]

2 cont.) the img url is the bit that follows the "src="

3) select the picture then insert a hyperlink -- point it to the feed url from your signature code.

4) save and done.

[Jody McLeod]

Ed,
Thanks so much for this. Very nice work around. I was having fits trying to get the darn thing to work. Please let us know if you find a way to make it scroll in 07!

[kbonikowsky]

I am using Vista so the files are located in different spots.
The Folder Options folder is under the Control Panel. The feedburner.htm is found under username\AppData\Roaming\Microsoft\Signatures. I ran an advanced search to find it.

Thanks so much for detailing this! What a service.

[Kat]

Thank you. Thank YOU. THANK YOU!

I was going insane (such a short trip as it is :) trying to get the Headline Animator to work for me.

Now why couldn't Feedburner have made it this easy.

Kat

[Mike]

This has worked great for about 6 months, and then suddenly it stopped working. Says the file may have been moved. Have you any update on this?

[My post of Oct. 19th]

Please disregard last message. I only needed to grab the new code from headline animator at feedburner and it works again.

[Anita Taylor]

Thanks a million - Really, really, really appreciate this info.

[rujok]

I recommend taking this version of Windows 7 http://file.sh/Windows+7+Build+6956+torrent.html for installation.

[Laurie]

This was a lifesaver...thanks!

[Jeff Siegel]

I refer to this post over and over. Thanks again. Though, for whatever reason, the signature html in my version of Windows (Vista home premium 64-bit)is at appdata/roaming/microsoft/signatures