This post explains how to create and use email templates in Outlook. If you find yourself frequently answering similar emails in Outlook, I have a great tip for you. You can save your replies as templates so you can access them whenever you need. This way, instead of writing out your text from scratch every time you can save time and use predefined text blocks with a click of a button.
Let me show you. There are two great methods you can use to answer emails with a saved reply template. The first one uses the free templates add-in and the second one uses the Quick Parts feature.
Email Templates with My Templates Add-in
- Let’s start with my templates now. What’s great about my templates is that they’re stored within your mailbox so they’re also available to you when you’re using another computer or looking on the web.
- By default, the “My Templates” add-in should be turned on in Outlook as long as you have an Exchange account; it’s not available for POP or IMAP accounts. You can check if you have the add-in by clicking on Get Add-ins at the top.
- Under my add-ins, you’re going to see it in the section of add-ins that are provided by Microsoft and it’s available from 2016 onwards.
- If it’s not turned on, you can enable it.
- How do you use these templates to reply to an email? When you’re in the reply, you will see a few templates and the message tab in the ribbon all the way on the right click it and it’s going to open the templates pane.
- It’s going to come with some sample responses. When you hover over the templates, you will get the option to delete and edit them by clicking the plus button. From here, we can create our own templates.
- To create our own template, click the plus, assign a name to it.
- You can add text to your response. There are no formatting options for the templates, so you can’t change the font size, color or add links to your text, which, to be honest, is quite limiting.
- What you can do is write a text in another application. Microsoft Word, for example, and then there add all the formatting you need and then copy and paste your text in the template.
- This way, you can even add links to your response. When you’re done with a response, click save, which will add it to the available templates.
- Now just a heads up: the My Templates add-in has a total size of 32 kilobytes for all templates so in case you get an error message saying “This template is too large to save, Please make it smaller, then try to save it again.” When you try to save that, you need to reduce the amount of content so that the combined size of all templates is less than 32 kilobytes. Don’t go overboard and you should be fine.
- Next time you need to reply to a message, simply click “View Templates” and select the one you want. It will copy the text into your response.
- Just two clicks and you’re done. Of course, you’re not just limited to using these templates for replies. You can also use them when you’re composing a new message.
Email Templates with Quick Parts
The other option is to use Quick Parts. Now, with quick parts, you can basically store reusable pieces of content and galleries. They can include text images, tables and even formatting. Here’s the thing, though: They are only available locally on your computer. They’re not automatically synced.
- To create a template with Quick Parts either type the text you want or use the text from an existing reply. Highlight the part of the text you want to use as a standard response, then go to the insert tab on the right in the text group. You’re going to see Quick parts. Click it and you will get the option to save the selection as a so-called building block to the Quick parts gallery.
- You can give this Quick parts a name with the dropdown for category. You can organize your Quick parts into separate groups by creating new categories. Now, I don’t need that, so I’m going to go with General. Click on OK.
- Next time you want to use this text, when you reply to a message, just click on insert Quick parts and select the template you want.
- A faster way is to add the gallery to your quick access toolbar. Just right click on the Quick parts in the ribbon and select add to quick access toolbar, then you can make your selection to use autocomplete in an even faster way.
- Just type the name of the quick part. In my case, it’s test and hit F3 and it’s there.
- It’s not even necessary to type the whole name as long as it’s unique. In my case, typing test and then F3 is enough. The great advantage of Quick parts is that the building blocks aren’t just limited to text.
- In this case, let’s say we’re out of stock for a particular item and we want to respond to customer requests that come in with an alternative item.
- In received response, I included some text to respond to the customer’s request. I also added a picture of this alternative product and its specs, all conveniently saved and available with just a few clicks.
- If you right click on any received response, you get the option to organize and delete.
- You will see all the building blocks you have. You can edit their properties, delete them or insert new ones. I already mentioned that the Quick parts are received locally on your computer.
Export Quick Parts to a Different PC
The last thing I want to show you how you can export them. The file they are saved in is called NormalEmail.dotm
To find the location:
- Open File Explorer/Windows Explorer.
- Type “%APPDATA%\Microsoft\Templates” into the address bar and hit enter.
- You’re going to find the NormalEmail.dotmfile.
- This file contains the settings for any styles that you may have added or modified.
- You can copy this file to your backup location or to another computer’s or user’s templates folder when Outlook is closed.
That’s how you can use email templates in Outlook to save time composing emails or answering repeated requests.
To get more information, visit the Microsoft website.
Now I’d like to hear from you:
Which finding from today’s report did you find most interesting? Or maybe you have a question about something that I covered.
Either way, I’d like to hear from you. So go ahead and leave a comment below.
