A simple way to personalize email sent from your BlackBerry® smartphone is to customize the signature that is attached to the end of email messages sent from your BlackBerry. This feature is available for email accounts that are integrated with the BlackBerry® Internet Service and/or associated with a BlackBerry® Enterprise Server.

Today I’ll be showing you how you can customize your email signature, so grab your BlackBerry smartphone and let’s get started!

Before we begin, you might be wondering if you are using the BlackBerry Internet Service, BlackBerry Enterprise Server, or both on your BlackBerry smartphone. Here’s how you can determine what type of email integration you are using on your BlackBerry smartphone (don’t forget it’s possible that you might be using both options, like me). You’ll need to know which version of BlackBerry® Device Software you are using to do this. If you don’t know, check out this knowledge base article.

How to identify if you have a BlackBerry Internet Service-integrated email address

If you are using BlackBerry Device Software 4.2 to 5.0:

1. On the home screen, select Email Settings – this icon may appear in the Setup folder
2. If required, log in to access your BlackBerry Internet Service account
• If no email addresses are listed, you have not integrated an email address using the BlackBerry Internet Service.

If you are using a BlackBerry® 6-enabled smartphone:

1. On the home screen, select Setup
2. Select Email Accounts
3. Select Internet Mail Account
• If no email addresses are listed, you have not integrated an email address using the BlackBerry Internet Service.

How to identify if a BlackBerry smartphone is associated with a BlackBerry Enterprise Server

If you are using BlackBerry Device Software 4.2 to 5.0:

1. On the home screen, select Options
2. Select Advanced Options
3. Select Enterprise Activation
4. Review the Status field to determine if the BlackBerry smartphone has been activated on a BlackBerry Enterprise Server. If no accounts are active, the status field will list Not Activated similar to the screenshot below:

If you are using a BlackBerry 6-enabled smartphone:

1. On the home screen, select Setup
2. Select Email Accounts
3. Select Enterprise Mail Account
4. Review the Activated Accounts field to determine if the BlackBerry smartphone was activated on a BlackBerry Enterprise Server. If no accounts are active, your BlackBerry smartphone is not associated with a BlackBerry Enterprise Server. If the BlackBerry smartphone is activated, it appears as follows:

After you’ve determined how your email address is set up with your BlackBerry smartphone, complete the steps below that apply to your BlackBerry smartphone to customize your email signature.

How to customize your email signature for a BlackBerry Internet Service-integrated email address

To modify the email signature of an email address that is integrated with the BlackBerry Internet Service, complete the following steps:

If you are using BlackBerry Device Software 4.2 to 5.0:

1. On the home screen, select Email
2. If required, log in to access your BlackBerry Internet Service account
3. Highlight the email address you would like to customize, then press the Menu key and select Edit
4. Specify your new signature and click Save to save the change.

If you are using a BlackBerry 6-enabled smartphone:

1. On the home screen, select Setup
2. Select Email Accounts
3. Select Internet Mail Account
4. If required, log in to access your BlackBerry Internet Service account
5. Highlight the email address you would like to customize, then press the Menu key and select Edit
6. Specify your new signature and click Save to save the change.

How to customize your email signature for a BlackBerry Enterprise Server-integrated email address

To modify the email signature of an email address that is associated with a BlackBerry Enterprise Server, complete the following steps:

1. On the home screen, select Messages
2. Press the Menu key and select Options
3. Select one of the following steps based on your BlackBerry Device Software version:
a) If you are using BlackBerry Device Software 4.2 to 5.0, select Email Settings
b) If you are using a BlackBerry 6-enabled smartphone, select Email Preferences
4. If the Message Services field appears, specify the email account that is activated against a BlackBerry Enterprise Server
5. Enable the Use Auto Signature if it isn’t enabled already
6. Type a signature, Press the Menu key and select Save.

You can also use BlackBerry® Desktop Manager to set up an email signature for your BlackBerry smartphone if it’s associated with a BlackBerry Enterprise Server. Follow the instructions below depending on which version of BlackBerry Desktop Software for PC you are using:

• BlackBerry Desktop Software for PC 4.x to 5.x – Select Email Settings from the main menu and you’ll be able to enter your desired signature in a text field.
• BlackBerry Desktop Software for PC 6.0 – Select Device, followed by Device Options, then Enterprise Email, which will allow you to enter your desired signature in a text field.

Tip: If your company uses BlackBerry Enterprise Server, you may have access to BlackBerry® Web Desktop Manager, a tool similar to BlackBerry Desktop Software that allows you to customize your BlackBerry account details – including your email signature – from a website using your desktop web browser. To find out if your company offers BlackBerry Web Desktop Manager, contact your BlackBerry Administrator. To learn more about BlackBerry Web Desktop Manager, click here.

After specifying your email signature using the instructions above, send yourself an email and you will be able to see your new signature appended to the sent email.

Do you have any questions about the email signature feature? Leave a comment and let me know!

Don’t forget to the visit the BlackBerry Support Community Forums, and say hi to @BlackBerryHelp on Twitter®.

It’s a very popular question from BlackBerry® Internet Service users: My contacts and calendar information synchronized with the BlackBerry Internet Service after my email address was integrated, so why doesn’t my email synchronize? Today I’d like to share my answer to that question and provide a little bit of insight into how the BlackBerry Internet Service works with your BlackBerry® smartphone.

So what exactly is the BlackBerry Internet Service? It’s designed to provide you with automatic delivery of your email messages and, depending on which email provider you use, your contacts and calendar information. One of the best things about the service is how it performs reconciliation and synchronization of your personal data. Let’s see how this applies to the email, contacts and calendar features offered by the BlackBerry Internet Service.

When you integrate your personal email address with the BlackBerry Internet Service, email reconciliation – if supported by your email provider – will be enabled. Email reconciliation means that when you mark a message as read or delete it on your BlackBerry smartphone, that same message will be marked as read or deleted on your email provider’s server. So if you are using Yahoo!® email for example, when you log in using a web browser, your inbox will match your BlackBerry smartphone’s messages view.

The BlackBerry Internet Service does not perform email synchronization, which means the only email you will be able to access on your BlackBerry smartphone is email sent and received from the time of integration with the BlackBerry Internet Service. So the key thing to remember here is that your email is reconciled – not synchronized. To learn more about wireless email reconciliation, you can view additional information on supported email providers.

Tip: If you use a BlackBerry® Enterprise Server, it’s possible to populate a BlackBerry smartphone with up to 30days or 3000 previous email messages when performing an Enterprise Activation. Learn more about BlackBerry Enterprise Server email pre-population.

However, the BlackBerry Internet Service does perform wireless synchronization of your contacts and calendar information if supported by your email provider, and if you are using a required version of BlackBerry® Device Software. This means that any changes made on your BlackBerry smartphone, or by using a web mail provider’s website, will automatically synchronize over the air.

You might be wondering which email providers provide contacts and calendar support. Currently, if you are using Gmail® (Google Mail™), Yahoo!, AOL® Mail, Alt-N or Windows Live™ Mail, Hotmail® or MSN®, you can enable wireless contact synchronization. Wireless contact synchronization requires the BlackBerry smartphone to have BlackBerry Device Software 5.x or 6.x (MSN® only works with BlackBerry Device Software 6.x). Wireless calendar synchronization is available to Gmail (Google Mail) users only and requires BlackBerry Device Software 5.0 or later.

To learn more about the BlackBerry Internet Service, check out our BlackBerry smartphone email support page. I would recommend checking out the user guide there, as it contains more information on the features I mentioned above in addition to other cool features offered by the BlackBerry Internet Service.

Have a question? Leave a comment and let me know!