Email Templates in Outlook

Outlook Tutorial – Email Templates

We can easily create and apply document templates In Word. Similarly, can we quickly create and apply email templates in Outlook? Yes, this tutorial will guide you to create, edit, and apply email templates easily in Outlook.

Table of Content

1. Create an email message template
2. Create a new email from template
3. Edit an email template
4. (Auto) reply with template
5. Reply or forward with template (of plain text)

1. New email template
2. New email from template
3. Edit email template
4. (Auto) reply with template
5. Reply or forward with template

Note: Methods introduced on this page apply to Microsoft Outlook 2019 desktop program in Windows 10. And the instructions may vary significantly or slightly depending on the version of Microsoft Outlook and the Windows environments.

1. Create an email message template

You can easily create a new email message template in Outlook as follows:

1. In the mail view, click Home > New Email to create a new email.

Tips: Alternatively, you can also press Ctrl + N keys to create a new email.

2. Now a new composing message window is opening. Add recipients, type in subject, add email tags, attach attachments, and compose the message body as you need.

3. Click File > Save As.

4. In the Save As dialog, name the new template in the File name box, select Outlook Template (*.oft) from the Save as type drop-down list, and click the Save button.

Tips: The new email message template is saved to the outlook template folder by default. If you need to save the template to another folder, you need to open the folder in the Save As dialog before clicking the Save button.

This is default Outlook template folder path: %AppData%\Microsoft\Templates

5. Now the new email message template is created. Please close the new composing message window without saving.

2. Create a new email from template

2.1 Create a new email from template by Choose Form feature

To create a new email from an existing template in Outlook, you can do as follows:

1. In the mail view, click Home > New Items > Choose Form.

2. In the Choose Form dialog:
(1) Select User Templates in File System from Look In drop-down list;
(2) Click to select the specified template you will create an email from (Tips: If your email template does not list in the dialog, you can click the Browse button to find and select it in another folder.);
(3) Click the Open button.

Then a new email is created based on the specified template. Go ahead to compose and send it as you need.

2.2 Create a new email from template by opening the template file directly

We can open the email template to create a new email from it directly.

1. Open the folder containing the email template.
Tips: If the email template is stored in the default template folder, you can open the folder by this folder path: %AppData%\Microsoft\Templates

2. Double click the email template to open it.

Then a new email is created based on the specified template. You can compose and send the new email as you need.

3. Edit an email template

As we know, the email template cannot be opened and edited directly. However, we can solve this job in a roundabout way: create a new email from the template, and then save the email as a same name template to overwrite the original one.

1. In Outlook, click Home > New Items > Choose Form.

2. In the Choose Form dialog:
(1) Select User Templates in File System from Look In drop-down list;
(2) Click to select the specified template you will create an email from (Tips: If you cannot find out the specified template, click the Browse button to find and select it from another folder);
(3) Click the Open button.

3. Now a new email is created from the specified template. Make changes in the new email as you need.

4. In the composing message window, click File > Save As.

5. In the Save As dialog:
(1) Select Outlook Template (*.oft) from the Save as type drop-down list;
(2) Open the folder containing the original email template;
(3) In the File name box, make sure the file name is definitely same as the file name of the original email template;
(4) Click the Save button.

6. Now the Confirm Save As dialog pops out. Please click the Yes button to overwrite the original template.

So far, we have edited the email template in a roundabout way. And you can close the new email without saving.

4. (Auto) reply with template

We can easily create a new email from an email template by the Choose Form feature, but how to reply an email with a template in Outlook? We can create a rule to solve this problem.

1. Prepare the email template that you will reply with. (Click to view how to create an email template.)

2. In the mail view, click Home > Rules > Manage Rules & Alerts.

3. In the Rules and Alerts dialog, click the New Rule butto to create a new rule.

4. In the Rules Wizard, click to highlight the Apply rule on messages I receive option, and click the Next button.

5. In the second Rules Wizard dialog, specify the conditions by which emails will be replied, and click the Next button.
In my case, I tick the sent only to me option.

6. In the third Rules Wizard dialog, tick the reply using a specific template option in the Step 1 section, and then click the linked text “a specified template” in the Step 2 section.

7. Now in the Select a Reply Template dialog, choose User Templates in File System from the Look In drop-down list, click to select the specified template, and click the Open button.

Tips: If you cannot find out the specified template in the dialog, click the Browse button to select it from other folders.

8. Now it returns to the third Rules Wizard, and click Next button to go ahead.

9. In the fourth Rules Wizard, specify the exceptions if necessary, and click the Next button.

10. In the last Rules Wizard, name the rule in the Step 1 box, tick the options as you need in the Step 2 section, and click the Finish button.

Tips: To reply emails in the Inbox folder now, tick the Run this rule now on message already in “Inbox” option.

11. It returns to the Rules and Alerts dialog, click the OK button to close it.

Tips:
(1) To automatically reply all incoming emails, you need to keep the Outlook running all the time.
(2) If you want to automatically reply emails in an Exchange account, you can click File > Info > Automatic Replies to enable the Automatic Replies feature, and then specified the automatic reply settings and text as below screenshot shown:

5. Reply or forward with template (of plain text)

If the reply or forward content are plain words only in the template, you can apply a quick step to achieve replying or forwarding with template.

1. In the mail view click Home > Create New (in the Quick Steps group).

2.In the Edit Quick Step dialog, name the new quick step, specify the action as Reply or Reply All or Forward, click Show Options to expand the options section, type in the reply or forward content, and click the Finish button.