Living in Outlook: Using Quick Parts

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!

In previous posts I have talked about Message Templates and Advanced Message Templates, and how I use them to easily manage status reports or any other type of e-mail that I regularly send. While Message Templates are very powerful, sometimes I just want a simple way to easily insert reusable content at any point when responding to an e-mail. Quick Parts let me do just that.

Quick Parts exist both in Outlook and Word, and allow you to save pieces of content to easily re-use, like the introductory text at the beginning of the Living in Outlook series, as you see in this post. Personally I like to use Quick Parts for all those answers that I repeat over and over again, and am tired of re-typing. I also have a few Quick Parts that contain holiday messages and images that I like to reuse. So let’s get started!

Creating a Quick Part

1. Select the Content You Want to Save The first step involves selecting the content that you have created and want to reuse. In this example I have selected a table that I fill out and send repeatedly.
2. Add the Selection to Quick Parts Now that the content is selected click on the Insert tab in the Ribbon, choose Quick Parts and then click Save Selection to Quick Part Gallery….
3. Choose a Name for Your New Quick Part Choose a name that you want for the Quick Part and press OK. You’ve just created a Quick Part!
4. Use Your New Quick Part Now that you have seen how easy it is to create Quick Parts, let’s look at how it’s even easier to use them. Whenever you want to insert your Quick Part click on the Insert tab in the Ribbon, choose Quick Parts and you will see a gallery with all your saved Quick Parts!
Clicking on the Quick Part will insert it at the current cursor position. You can find more advanced options by right-clicking the desired Quick Part.

That’s it! Your favorite replies and reusable content are now at your fingertips!

As always, let us know how you use this feature to make your Outlook experience even better.

Jed Brown
Outlook Program Manager

More info on Quick Parts:

Create reuseable text blocks for e-mail messages