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The Living in Outlook series is about sharing tips and workflows around real-world scenarios. We’ll start the conversation with a topic – you can add to it by posting your tips and workflows in the comments!
At my job, I often send team status reports to the same people, or have a specific message style that I really like and tend to reuse. Even at home I have my message styles for Christmas, birthdays and pretty much anything family-related.
If you are anything like me, sending these types of messages probably goes something like this:
This can become an annoying process. Fortunately, Outlook Message Templates are an excellent solution to this problem. Templates are easy to make and when you’re getting ready to send that same status report or holiday message just open your template, add some new content, and hit send!
In the following example, I’ll show you how I use templates at work for sending quick status reports.
You have just created your first template!
Now that you have created and saved a template every time you need to send that weekly status report you can simply open the template, add updated content like new graphs or tables, and send it. If you ever make any changes to the template that you want to save, follow Step 1 and re-save the template.
There are two common ways to open templates:
That’s it! Templates are really easy to use!
Tune in later this week for a follow-up post on content linking with Excel that makes table and graph updating even easier.
As always, let us know how you use this feature to make your Outlook experience even better!
Jed Brown Outlook Program Manager
Comments: (14) Collapse
We use the practice of creating signatures to accomplish this. What are the advantages of templates over signatures?
And it's precisely step 2 which shoots it down. If templates are so easy to set up (and they are), then their selection and use ought to be easier than the four-levels-down list as described. We need a "Templated Message" item in the "New" menu option list which lists available templates and (after a separator) has a one-click to save current message as a template, leading to the "Save" dialogue box with the right extension chosen, the (profile-specifiable) default directory, and the filename/display-name filled in but user-changeable. On signatures, I used to be able to build from elements, but now they are not cumulative, I need a different signature for each combination of elements.
In addition to signatures I use Notes as email templates by copy/pasteing when needed. IMHO, templates are way too slow to open. They should be openable from New Message dropdown menu without any additional clicks.
An additional tip might be usefull if you often use the same template.
You can add a dedicated button in the toolbar and map it to the template. Once done you can also associate a keyboard shortcut to it :-)
Very handy if for dealing with customer resquests, orders confirmation, etc..
Why would you use Windows Explorer if this is about living in Outlook? As for the Outlook way of opening the template, surely there is a quicker way?
here shows how to create a menu shortcut to the template:
articles.techrepublic.com.com/5100-22_11-6129939.html
Thanks for all of your constructive comments regarding template use. Tiago, thanks for the link. It seems like a great way to make this process even more useful!
The advantage of templates is that they don't have to be just text in the body of the email - you can have the recipients already chosen, the attachment already included, and if you go into forms, you can have more than just the textbox. Admittedly multiple signatures is the quickest and easiest way to have different texts for email body (esp as Outlook 07 forces the user to use Word as the email editor)
[quote]Tune in later this week for a follow-up post on content linking with Excel that makes table and graph updating even easier.[/quote] did the dog eat that post or where did it go? that's exactly what i've been looking for...
After you send a message using a template, if the user moves it from their inbox to another folder the template is no longer accessible. Is there away around this? Why is this happening?
Hi all, thanks for the tips shared here, this makes it easy to deal with templates.
The next step I would like to try is to insert automatically date in the text message (the date of yesterday, not today) and even better, automatically attach a file, but this file will change every day (the names contains the date of yesterday also) any clue on how to do this ?
I haven't found yet...
I am trying to build a cover letter template. I would like to address job requirements in the body of the template in a columnar format where there is a "Your Requirements" and "My Qualifications" as headers. In outlook messages (I have Outlook '03), I don't believe you can create columns in the body of the message by means of the toolbar menus. I have also tried sending in Word a document with columns but it doesn't arrive in outlook in print layout, it arrives in reading layout. I am trying to do this to create something that stands out from other candidates and I think it may be asking a bit much to send an attachment for a cover letter and an attachment for a resume. Does anyone have a suggestion?
I was wondering if we could insert fields into templates? I can't find this addressed anywhere. It would be great if we could use Dear {FirstName}, at the beginning and have it auto populate that or any other fields from Outlook BCM. It doesn't seem to offer that. Can this be done? How?
I've downloaded an Outlook Newsletter Template but when I send a test email to myself (using a different email address) the newsletter changes forms completely. The verbiage in the newsletter is shown as a message as a normal email message and all the images in the newsletter are attached to the email as attachments. Does anyone know what the fix is for this? I've tried to email the template both unchanged and then again removing all original images and text but with the same results. Thank you for your insight.
Comments: (loading) Collapse