If your email signature deployed through BulkSignature is not showing up correctly in Gmail, appears broken, or seems to be missing after being pushed to your organization, this guide will walk you through the most common causes and how to resolve them. Most issues fall into one of three buckets: Gmail configuration on the user side, deployment or sync status inside BulkSignature, or Google Workspace admin-level permissions.
Before diving into any fix, give a newly deployed signature a few minutes to propagate. Gmail and the Google Workspace APIs do not always apply changes instantly, and a short wait often resolves what looks like a bug.
Quick pre-check: confirm the deployment actually completed
Open your BulkSignature dashboard and go to the Signatures section. Locate the signature template you assigned to the affected user or group and verify that the deployment status is marked as Applied or Synced. If it reads Pending, Failed, or Queued, the signature has not yet reached Gmail, and nothing on the user side will help until the deployment finishes.
If a deployment is stuck, click the signature, then click Redeploy or Force Sync. Make sure the assigned user is still active in your Google Workspace directory and has not been suspended, archived, or moved to an organizational unit the app cannot write to.
Issue 1: The signature is not appearing in new emails
This is the single most reported problem and it usually comes down to Gmail's own "Signature defaults" settings, not BulkSignature itself.
What to check:
Open Gmail and click the gear icon in the top right, then choose See all settings.
2. Scroll down to the Signature section on the General tab.
3. Confirm that the signature pushed by BulkSignature is listed there. The name will match what was set in your BulkSignature dashboard.
4. To ensure your signature appears correctly, confirm that the signature pushed by BulkSignature is listed in your settings .(in settings Signature name was set as 'My Signature') If you haven't deployed it yet, the BulkSignature Chrome extension can help you deploy your signature seamlessly.
Finally, under Signature defaults, make sure your preferred signature is selected for both FOR NEW EMAILS USE and ON REPLY/FORWARD USE. Leaving either of these Gmail settings on "No signature" is the most common reason a signature fails to show up.
5. Scroll to the bottom of the page and click Save Changes.
If the signature is not listed at all, the deployment did not reach this mailbox. Go back to BulkSignature and redeploy, or review whether the user is included in the target group.
Issue 2: The signature is missing from replies and forwards only
Gmail treats replies and forwards as a separate signature rule. Even if new emails display the signature correctly, replies can come out blank if the reply default is set to "No signature".
Fix it the same way as above, but specifically adjust the ON REPLY/FORWARD USE dropdown. Then send a test reply to yourself to verify.
Keep in mind that on replies, Gmail inserts the signature above the quoted original message, not at the very bottom of the thread. If you scroll down past the previous email, you may also see the signature hidden under Show trimmed content. This is Gmail's default behavior and not a BulkSignature issue.
Issue 3: The signature shows up broken, stripped, or as plain text
If your deployed signature appears without images, without color, or with parts of it missing, Gmail is almost certainly rendering the message in Plain Text mode. Plain Text mode strips out all HTML, which removes the formatting, banners, and logos that make a BulkSignature template look professional.
Turn off Plain Text mode:
Click Compose to start a new email.
In the bottom-right of the compose window, click the three-dot menu (More options).
If Plain text mode has a checkmark next to it, click to uncheck it.
4. Close the compose window and start a new one. The signature should now render in full HTML.
If the signature still looks broken after disabling Plain Text mode, the cause is likely browser cache. Clear the cache for mail.google.com, hard-refresh Gmail, and test again.
Issue 4: Images or logos are not loading
Gmail will block or fail to render signature images for several reasons:
The image is hosted on a private or internal server that the recipient cannot reach.
The image URL uses
http://instead ofhttps://, which Gmail now treats as insecure.The recipient has chosen Ask before displaying external images in their own Gmail settings.
The image file exceeds Gmail's practical size limit. Keep signature banners and logos under 2MB for best performance.
Inside BulkSignature, make sure any image you upload to your template is served from a secure, publicly accessible URL. If you are linking to your own CDN, confirm the asset returns a 200 response and serves over HTTPS.
Issue 5: "The signature you're trying to save exceeds the maximum length"
Gmail enforces a hard ceiling of 10,000 characters for a single signature, including all inline HTML. Rich templates with banners, social icons, disclaimers, and tracking pixels can easily push past that limit.
To reduce signature size:
Trim or remove legal disclaimers that are already covered by your organization-wide footer.
Remove unused font declarations and inline styles that duplicate default values.
Avoid nesting tables deeper than necessary.
BulkSignature will usually warn you inside the editor if a template is approaching the limit. If you are still blocked, edit the template in the dashboard and redeploy.
Issue 6: The signature disappears on mobile (Gmail app on iOS / Android)
Signatures pushed by BulkSignature are fully compatible with the Gmail mobile apps for both iPhone and Android. Once your signature is deployed to your Gmail web profile, it will work seamlessly on your mobile device as well
Issue 7: BulkSignature cannot reach a user's mailbox
If a single user or a small group never receives their signature, the problem is usually at the Google Workspace permission layer.
Check the following:
Confirm the BulkSignature app is still authorized in your Google Admin Console under Security → API controls → App access control.
Verify the service account used by BulkSignature has domain-wide delegation with the correct scopes for Gmail signature management.
Ensure the affected user is in an organizational unit that is included in your BulkSignature group assignment, not excluded.
Confirm the user is not suspended, archived, or in a "no Gmail license" SKU.
Running Force Sync on a single user inside BulkSignature will surface a specific error from the Google API if the permissions are wrong. Copy that error into the search bar of our help center for a direct resolution.
Issue 8: The old signature still appears after a new one was deployed
When you update a signature in BulkSignature and redeploy, Gmail users may continue to see the previous signature for a short window. Here are a few common causes and their solutions:
Cached browser session: Gmail may be serving a cached version. Have the user hard-refresh the browser (Ctrl+Shift+R on Windows, Cmd+Shift+R on Mac) or log out and back in. Administrators can also force users to re-authenticate sooner by choosing to shorten the Gmail session length within Google Workspace.
Manual user edits: The user has manually edited their Gmail signature after it was deployed. Any manual edit in Gmail overrides the BulkSignature template until the next deployment. Simply redeploy to restore the managed version.
Pending directory sync: The directory sync has not run yet. BulkSignature refreshes directory data every 24 hours by default. If you just updated a user's job title or phone number, you can trigger a manual sync directly from the dashboard rather than waiting for the next cycle.
Issue 9: Placeholder variables appear literally (for example {{firstName}})
If recipients see the template variable text instead of the actual user data, the placeholder either does not match a directory field or the field is empty for that specific user.
How to fix:
Open the user's profile in BulkSignature and check that every field referenced in the template has a value.
Confirm the placeholder spelling in the template matches exactly what BulkSignature uses. Variable names are case-sensitive.
If the data lives in a custom directory attribute, make sure the sync is configured to pull that attribute from Google Workspace.
After correcting the data, redeploy the signature.
Issue 10: Signature formatting looks different in Outlook or other email clients
Gmail sends signatures as HTML, but recipients using older Outlook versions, Apple Mail, or mobile clients may render them differently. This is a rendering quirk of the receiving client, not of Gmail or BulkSignature.
To minimize cross-client inconsistency, keep templates table-based, avoid flexbox and CSS grid, use web-safe fonts (Arial, Helvetica, Georgia, Verdana) with sensible fallbacks, and stick to inline styles. BulkSignature's built-in templates are already optimized for this; issues tend to arise only with heavily customized HTML.
Still stuck?
If none of the above resolves the issue:
Take a screenshot of the Gmail settings page showing the signature section.
Copy the exact error message (if any) shown in BulkSignature under the affected user.
Note the user's email address, the device and browser where the issue was reproduced, and the time you last ran a sync.
Send all of that to the BulkSignature support team and we can trace the specific API response for that mailbox. In most cases we can identify the root cause within a single support cycle.