A letter with no name on it says so, before you send it
The most common way a cover letter fails is not tone. It is a file that goes out without the sender's name anywhere on it.
— unsigned is a fact, so the product prints it as one.
Applications fail for boring reasons. Among the most boring is a cover letter that arrives as a beautifully set page of prose with no name at the bottom, because the sender built it in a tool that had never been told who they were.
The cover letter builder treats that as a fact worth printing rather than an edge case worth ignoring.
The signed draft
We drafted a letter for Ada Fennimore, an invented candidate, from a connected résumé, against a posting for an invented company. Her name came from the résumé into Your details, the letter closed with it, and the Before you send checklist on Review & download showed three rows ticked: the recipient and role, the signature with her name, and the length in words.
The same letter without a name
Then we cleared the Full name field under Details & drafting and drafted the same letter again. The sender block lost its name, the letter closed with "Sincerely," and nothing under it, and the checklist changed: the signature row was flagged, with the instruction add your name in Details & drafting. Nothing else on the page moved, which is the point: the one missing fact is named, where it is, with where to fix it.
A check, not a gate
The download still works. The product's position is that it is not entitled to stop you sending your own letter; it is only entitled to make sure you knew. The checklist says as much in its own words: read the final letter and check the names, facts and contact details, and any claim you add is yours to check.
Why the signature is treated as a fact
Everything on that checklist is measured on the draft in front of it: who the letter is addressed to, the name at the bottom, the number of words. The signature is either in the document or it is not, and the answer is a fact rather than a recommendation, which is why it is flagged rather than suggested.
Where the name comes from
From the résumé you connect. A letter drafted from a résumé inherits the name on it through Your details, which is why the signed run needed no extra step. The résumé itself is read without a model, as described in how the résumé reader works, and the review before drafting shows you the name it found; if a scan or an unusual layout lost it, that is the first place you will see an empty field.
The download carries whatever the page carries
Both formats are free, in any of the 12 designs, with no watermark. Both carry exactly what the draft carries, which is the reason the checklist sits beside the download buttons rather than after them: an unsigned letter downloads as an unsigned letter, in PDF and in DOCX, and neither format adds a name the document does not have.
The fix takes one step. Add your name under Details & drafting, and the sender block and the sign-off pick it up.
What the check does not claim
That a signed letter is a good letter. The checklist has no opinion about your writing, no view on your chances, and no access to the employer. It reports a few facts about the page you are about to send, and the draft itself has already named the requirements it refused to claim on your behalf, which is the gaps list. Whether the letter is any good remains a judgement, and it is yours.
Check a letter before it goes
The Before you send checklist shows who the letter is addressed to, whether it carries your name, and how long it is.
Open the cover letter builderSee the tracingQuestions
- What does the product do when the letter has no name
- It says so. On Review and download, the Before you send checklist marks the signature row and tells you where to fix it: add your name in Details and drafting.
- Does it stop the download
- No. It is a check rather than a gate. Print / Save PDF and Download DOCX still work, and the decision stays yours.
- Where does the name come from
- From Your details, under Details and drafting, which is filled from the résumé you connected. A letter drafted from a résumé is signed with the name on it; clear that field and the letter has nothing to sign with.
- What else does the checklist show
- The recipient and role the letter is addressed to, and the length in words. Under the letter, Details on each paragraph shows the line of your résumé every sentence came from.
- Is the letter worse without a name
- It is harder to act on. The reader has a document, an address and no sender, and in a stack of applications that is enough friction to lose the letter.
Conxfolio is a free set of four career tools: a résumé builder with 37 rendered layouts, an ATS résumé checker that prints its own arithmetic, a cover letter builder that traces every proof paragraph back to the line it came from, and a portfolio builder with 22 authored designs. There is no account to create, nothing is held back for a paid plan, and no language model is used anywhere in the product, so the readers, the score and the letter are deterministic code you can check.