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Google Workspace append footer: add a legal footer to every outgoing email

Google Workspace append footer, step by step: the Admin console path, the internal-mail option, image sizes, the 24-hour wait and footer versus signature.

By The Ulrea team

The Google Workspace append footer is a setting in the Admin console that adds the same text to the bottom of outgoing messages. You find it under Menu, Apps, Google Workspace, Gmail, Compliance. Google says users can’t change or remove it. These steps follow Google’s page on setting up Google Workspace user signatures in Gmail, which showed a last-updated date of 1 October 2026 when we read it on 5 October 2026.

Google Workspace append footer, in short

  1. Admin console: Menu, Apps, Google Workspace, Gmail, Compliance.
  2. Scroll to Append footer and click Configure (or Add another rule).
  3. Name the setting, write the footer text and format it.
  4. Tick the internal-mail box only if staff should see it too.
  5. Click Save, then check the Append footer table. Allow up to 24 hours.

Here is the sequence from Google’s page, with its labels.

  1. In the Google Admin console, go to Menu, then Apps, then Google Workspace, then Gmail, then Compliance.
  2. Scroll to the Append footer setting.
  3. Click Configure, or Add another rule if one already exists.
  4. In the Append footer box, enter a name for the footer setting.
  5. In the footer text field, enter the text you want at the bottom of every message. Use the formatting tools to adjust how it looks.
  6. Optional: tick Append the footer to messages being sent within your organization.
  7. At the bottom of the Add setting box, click Save.
  8. Check that the new rule appears in the Append footer table.

Google says changes can take up to 24 hours, though they usually happen more quickly. Send a test message from a normal account a day later, not five minutes later, before you decide something is broken.

A footer and a signature can both sit at the bottom of an email, but they come from different places.

Append footerUser signature
Who sets itAn admin, in the Admin consoleEach user, in their own signature box
Can the user change itNo, Google says users can’t change or remove itYes, for the signature box
Where you configure itCompliance, in the Gmail settingsThe signature box in Gmail’s settings
Best used forOne identical block for everyoneName, role, phone, photo

Think of the Google Workspace append footer as the part of the message that belongs to the company and the signature as the part that belongs to the person. If you try to use one for both jobs you get either every employee editing a legal line or one admin typing everyone’s phone number. Our guide to setting the same signature for everyone in Google Workspace covers the signature side, including what users can still edit.

Keep the Google Workspace append footer to the lines that must be identical for every sender and rarely change. Typical candidates:

  • A confidentiality or privacy notice that your adviser has approved.
  • A short pointer to a policy page on your site.

We do not give legal wording here. Whether you need any of these, and what they must say, depends on where you operate, and the right source is an official one for your country or your lawyer. This is general information, not legal advice. For wording ideas you can take to a lawyer, see email disclaimer examples, and for the question of whether to put the notice in the signature or below it, see adding a disclaimer to an email signature.

Things that do not belong in it: a person’s name, a phone number, a job title, or a photo. The footer cannot know who sent the message.

Google’s page recommends an image of 70 to 100 pixels high by 300 to 400 pixels wide for footers, and says the maximum size is 100 pixels high by 1000 pixels wide. That is the whole of what we found on image sizes for the footer.

The same page says Gmail signatures can have up to 10,000 characters. That figure is stated for signatures. We did not find a separate character count for the footer text, so we are not going to invent one. If you plan a long legal block, paste it in, save it, and send yourself a test.

Plan a Google Workspace append footer image like any other email image: a clear logo, a small file, and text beside it so the message still reads if images are off. The email footer article covers that wider question.

What Google’s page does not say about the append footer

On the page we read, these topics are not mentioned:

  • Whether the footer is HTML or plain text.
  • How it behaves with encrypted or signed messages.
  • What happens on replies.
  • Mobile behavior.
  • Targeting by organizational unit or group.
  • Any delay mechanism other than the 24-hour note.

If one of these matters to you, test it with real accounts and a second mail service, and read what arrives. The point of the test is to see the raw result on the receiving side.

Seeing how the two parts stack

The drawing below shows a person’s signature with a short company notice under it. In a real Google Workspace append footer, the notice is added by Google when the message is sent, not drawn into the signature, so this picture is only a guide to the final look.

Bluegate Advisory 
Peter Walsh  |  Client Manager
+1 415 555 0100  |  +44 7700 900318  |  peter@bluegate.example  |  bluegate.example
LinkedInXInstagram
Bluegate Advisory is a made-up firm. This line stands in for a footer.

Compact layout. The firm and person are made up.

If you want the person-level part of that picture to be the same for 30 staff, emailfooter designs the layout in WordPress and gives each employee their own steps for Gmail. It does not set the Admin console footer for you, and it does not push signatures into mailboxes. For Gmail, each person still pastes their own.

  1. Save the rule and wait. Google’s range is up to 24 hours.
  2. Send from a user in the organizational area the rule should cover, to an outside address.
  3. Open the message in the receiving mailbox and check the footer text and any image.
  4. If you ticked the internal-mail option, send one to a colleague and confirm the footer shows.
  5. Reply to your own test and see what the new message looks like.
  6. Review the Append footer table for duplicate rules.
  • Too soon. Allow the full 24 hours from the save.
  • Rule missing from the table. The save did not complete; repeat the steps.
  • Internal mail. Colleagues see the footer on internal messages only if you ticked the internal-mail box. Google’s page treats that as an option you choose.
  • Two similar rules. Add another rule is supported, and two near-identical ones can give you a repeated line. Merge them.
  • Image broken. Check the dimensions against Google’s range.

The Google Workspace append footer is simple to set and slow to prove. Write the text once, save it, and give the test a day.

Frequently asked questions

In the Admin console, go to Menu, Apps, Google Workspace, Gmail, Compliance, then scroll to Append footer.

No. Google’s page says users can’t change or remove it.

Only if you tick Append the footer to messages being sent within your organization.

Google says changes can take up to 24 hours but typically happen more quickly.

Keep reading

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Written by the Ulrea team. We build and look after emailfooter, a free WordPress plugin for company email signatures. These guides come from setting it up for real mail apps and real teams. Found something out of date? Tell us. Made by Ulrea.