diff --git a/outlook-bulk-sender/BulkArchiveMailer.AddIn/SignatureReader.cs b/outlook-bulk-sender/BulkArchiveMailer.AddIn/SignatureReader.cs
index 1a5915f..6aa6adc 100644
--- a/outlook-bulk-sender/BulkArchiveMailer.AddIn/SignatureReader.cs
+++ b/outlook-bulk-sender/BulkArchiveMailer.AddIn/SignatureReader.cs
@@ -1,6 +1,8 @@
 using System;
 using System.Collections.Generic;
 using System.IO;
+using System.Text;
+using System.Text.RegularExpressions;
 using Microsoft.Win32;
 using Outlook = Microsoft.Office.Interop.Outlook;
 
@@ -38,7 +40,7 @@ namespace BulkArchiveMailer.AddIn
                 }
 
                 var path = ResolveSignaturePath(signatureName);
-                return File.Exists(path) ? File.ReadAllText(path) : null;
+                return File.Exists(path) ? ReadSignatureHtml(path) : null;
             }
             catch
             {
@@ -119,5 +121,141 @@ namespace BulkArchiveMailer.AddIn
 
             return null;
         }
+
+        /// <summary>
+        /// Reads a signature .htm file with the encoding it was actually
+        /// written in, instead of assuming UTF-8 the way
+        /// <see cref="File.ReadAllText(string)"/> does for BOM-less files.
+        ///
+        /// Outlook writes signature .htm files in the system ANSI code
+        /// page (windows-1251 on a Russian Windows) without a BOM and
+        /// usually without a reliable &lt;meta charset&gt; tag, so blindly
+        /// reading as UTF-8 mangles Cyrillic into replacement characters.
+        ///
+        /// Detection order:
+        /// 1. BOM (UTF-8 / UTF-16 LE / UTF-16 BE / UTF-32 LE / UTF-32 BE) - trusted if present.
+        /// 2. &lt;meta charset=...&gt; or &lt;meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="...charset=..."&gt;
+        ///    found in the first ~1KB, if the named encoding is recognized.
+        /// 3. Encoding.Default (the system ANSI code page) - matches
+        ///    Outlook's legacy signature file format.
+        ///
+        /// Never throws: any failure along the way falls back to the
+        /// previous behavior, <see cref="File.ReadAllText(string)"/>.
+        /// </summary>
+        internal static string ReadSignatureHtml(string path)
+        {
+            try
+            {
+                var bytes = File.ReadAllBytes(path);
+
+                var bomEncoding = DetectBomEncoding(bytes, out var preambleLength);
+                if (bomEncoding != null)
+                {
+                    return bomEncoding.GetString(bytes, preambleLength, bytes.Length - preambleLength);
+                }
+
+                var metaEncoding = TryDetectMetaCharsetEncoding(bytes);
+                if (metaEncoding != null)
+                {
+                    return metaEncoding.GetString(bytes, 0, bytes.Length);
+                }
+
+                return Encoding.Default.GetString(bytes, 0, bytes.Length);
+            }
+            catch
+            {
+                try
+                {
+                    return File.ReadAllText(path);
+                }
+                catch
+                {
+                    return null;
+                }
+            }
+        }
+
+        private static Encoding DetectBomEncoding(byte[] bytes, out int preambleLength)
+        {
+            // UTF-32 BOMs must be checked before UTF-16 ones: the UTF-32 LE
+            // BOM (FF FE 00 00) starts with the same two bytes as the
+            // UTF-16 LE BOM (FF FE).
+            if (bytes.Length >= 4 && bytes[0] == 0x00 && bytes[1] == 0x00 && bytes[2] == 0xFE && bytes[3] == 0xFF)
+            {
+                preambleLength = 4;
+                return new UTF32Encoding(bigEndian: true, byteOrderMark: true);
+            }
+
+            if (bytes.Length >= 4 && bytes[0] == 0xFF && bytes[1] == 0xFE && bytes[2] == 0x00 && bytes[3] == 0x00)
+            {
+                preambleLength = 4;
+                return new UTF32Encoding(bigEndian: false, byteOrderMark: true);
+            }
+
+            if (bytes.Length >= 3 && bytes[0] == 0xEF && bytes[1] == 0xBB && bytes[2] == 0xBF)
+            {
+                preambleLength = 3;
+                return new UTF8Encoding(encoderShouldEmitUTF8Identifier: true);
+            }
+
+            if (bytes.Length >= 2 && bytes[0] == 0xFE && bytes[1] == 0xFF)
+            {
+                preambleLength = 2;
+                return new UnicodeEncoding(bigEndian: true, byteOrderMark: true);
+            }
+
+            if (bytes.Length >= 2 && bytes[0] == 0xFF && bytes[1] == 0xFE)
+            {
+                preambleLength = 2;
+                return new UnicodeEncoding(bigEndian: false, byteOrderMark: true);
+            }
+
+            preambleLength = 0;
+            return null;
+        }
+
+        private static readonly Regex MetaCharsetRegex = new Regex(
+            @"<meta\b[^>]*charset\s*=\s*[""']?\s*([A-Za-z0-9_\-]+)",
+            RegexOptions.IgnoreCase | RegexOptions.Compiled);
+
+        private static Encoding TryDetectMetaCharsetEncoding(byte[] bytes)
+        {
+            try
+            {
+                // <meta charset=...> tags are always plain ASCII, so
+                // Latin1 (single byte, 1:1 with the raw bytes) is a safe,
+                // lossless way to look for them regardless of the file's
+                // real encoding.
+                var headLength = Math.Min(bytes.Length, 1024);
+                var head = Encoding.GetEncoding("ISO-8859-1").GetString(bytes, 0, headLength);
+
+                var match = MetaCharsetRegex.Match(head);
+                if (!match.Success)
+                {
+                    return null;
+                }
+
+                var charsetName = match.Groups[1].Value.Trim();
+                if (string.IsNullOrEmpty(charsetName))
+                {
+                    return null;
+                }
+
+                try
+                {
+                    return Encoding.GetEncoding(charsetName);
+                }
+                catch
+                {
+                    // Unrecognized charset name - let the caller fall back
+                    // to Encoding.Default instead.
+                    return null;
+                }
+            }
+            catch
+            {
+                return null;
+            }
+        }
     }
 }
diff --git a/outlook-bulk-sender/BulkArchiveMailer.AddIn/UI/PreviewForm.cs b/outlook-bulk-sender/BulkArchiveMailer.AddIn/UI/PreviewForm.cs
index a53af63..b115008 100644
--- a/outlook-bulk-sender/BulkArchiveMailer.AddIn/UI/PreviewForm.cs
+++ b/outlook-bulk-sender/BulkArchiveMailer.AddIn/UI/PreviewForm.cs
@@ -58,7 +58,7 @@ namespace BulkArchiveMailer.AddIn.UI
             {
                 if (!string.IsNullOrWhiteSpace(settings.SignatureHtmlPath))
                 {
-                    return File.Exists(settings.SignatureHtmlPath) ? File.ReadAllText(settings.SignatureHtmlPath) : null;
+                    return File.Exists(settings.SignatureHtmlPath) ? SignatureReader.ReadSignatureHtml(settings.SignatureHtmlPath) : null;
                 }
 
                 return SignatureReader.TryAutoDetectSignatureHtml(outlookApplication);