I use Evolution for email on three machines, and I’d rather update my signatures once, rather than three times.

As signatures are store as text files, I decided the easiest thing to do was to create a single source file in a directory which is kept in sync across the machines via Nextcloud, and then symlink that file to the Evolution config file.

For me - Debian 11 - the directory in question is ~/.config/evolution/signatures.

I had hoped that putting a text file into that directory would make it available within Evolution. But sadly not.

It appears that, when one creates a new signature from within Evolution, it is a given a UUID. Which means that the UUID varies across machines.

I wonder whether exporting settings from one machine, and importing them on the other machines, would mean the same UUID was used on each machine.

I’ve still gone for the symlink approach, and I’ve had to customise it for each machine. The outcome is the same, even if it feels less tidy.

ln -s /path/to/source/file ~/.config/evolution/signatures/the-signature-specific-UUID

I can now update my source file, and, once Nextcloud has synced it to the other machines, the signature in Evolution is updated automatically.