Introduction to Shared Email Templates

Empower your Outlook experience

Shared Email Templates for Outlook was created to save your time. With this tool, you can use your templates in any Outlook, whether desktop or online, including Outlook for Windows, Outlook for Mac, and Outlook on the web. As all templates are stored in a sharing cloud-based service, you can easily share them with your colleagues united into one or several teams.

To start using Shared Email Templates, simply install the add-in, sign up, create a team, and invite your mates. If you have security concerns, just encrypt your team templates with your own team password.

Find Shared Email Templates cheat sheets here:

Cheat Sheets

How to start Shared Email Templates

To learn to start the add-in, click the version of Outlook you use in the list below:

Supported versions

The add-in works for Outlook email accounts connected to Microsoft/Office 365, outlook.com, or on-premise Exchange 2016+.

Microsoft Outlook Supported browsers for Outlook online
  • Outlook on Windows connected to Microsoft/Office 365
  • Outlook on Mac connected to Microsoft/Office 365
  • Outlook 2021 for Windows
  • Outlook 2019 for Windows
  • Outlook 2016 for Windows
  • Outlook 2021 for Mac
  • Outlook 2019 for Mac
  • Outlook 2016 for Mac
  • Outlook on the web
  • Google Chrome 78 and higher
  • Microsoft Edge 44 and higher
  • Microsoft Edge (Chromium-based) – beta support 79 and higher
  • Safari 12 and higher (limited support)
  • Firefox 69 and higher

Shared Email Templates in Outlook

You can download the detailed User interface overview cheat sheet:

Download cheat sheet

When you run Shared Email Templates in your Outlook, you'll see the add-in pane: Shared Email Templates in your Outlook

  1. Type any text into the Search field to search in the names and contents of templates, folders, and teams. Click Aa to make the search case-sensitive.

    Also, you can select some text in your message body, click the magnifier icon, and get the list of items that contain this text. Don't forget to deselect the selected text in the message body before pasting the template!

  2. Take advantage of Selection Mode to select several items and copy, move, or delete them at once.
  3. Select the view: All Templates, Favorite Templates, My Templates, Team Templates, Shortcuts, Mail Merge (you can use Mail Merge only if this feature is included in your subscription plan), or Signatures.
  4. You can add any template to Favorite Templates by right-clicking it and selecting Add to Favorites.
  5. The default personal folders are Favorite Templates and My Templates. You can create new subfolders for your templates.
  6. You can link an Outlook folder with your drafts to Shared Email Templates and use these drafts as templates. Linked folders are marked with a blue letter 'O'.
  7. You can create or import datasets and insert values from them into templates. Datasets are marked with a corresponding icon.
  8. You can create ready-made reply templates or use shortcuts to construct your emails and templates. Shortcuts have a hash symbol before the name.
  9. To insert a template into the message body, select it and click the Paste icon.
  10. Shared templates are stored in teams. You can invite members to your teams and share templates with them.
  11. To secure your privacy, you can encrypt your team. Encrypted teams have a small key sign on the label.
  12. These are the template actions: Paste, Edit in browser, Edit, Add to favorites, Copy, Move, Delete.
  13. Select a template to see its contents in the preview pane.
  14. Click this button to create a new template.
  15. Here is the Handle Shortcuts button. You'll need to click it if you use shortcuts to create your emails.
  16. By clicking the three dots, you can go to your profile, sign out, view logs, ask us a question, get online help, access cheat sheets, or see the version of the product you use.
  17. This icon shows that there are unread notifications waiting for you. Click it to see everything you missed.

Shared Email Templates in your browser

You can manage your templates and teams in a browser. Simply open the Shared Email Templates home page and sign in.

Shared Email Templates in your browser

  1. Your templates are collected in folders: All Templates, Favorite Templates, My Templates, Team Templates, Shortcuts, Mail Merge (you can use Mail Merge only if this feature is included in your subscription plan), and Signatures. This toolbar lets you filter all templates by the selected folder.
  2. After selecting a template, you'll be able to see its contents on the right and edit it.
  3. Click the plus sign to create a new template, folder, or team.
  4. If there are unread notifications, you'll see this icon.
  5. Click the three dots to open the More menu.

    Note. Under certain circumstances the More menu contains the Manage Keys option. For more details, visit the Manage subscription keys and activations page.

Documentation and how-to guides

Responses

Chris Church says:
May 13, 2023 at 12:05 am

I'm having a recurring issue where I have the Shared Email Templates pinned open to any new email but it constantly asks me to sign in which is annoying. Is there a work around for this?

Hello Chris,

Thank you for reporting the problem. Once the add-in asks to sign in again, please do that and hit on the three-dots icon at the bottom of the add-in's pane then choose "View logs" from the list. Click on the Copy to Clipboard button and save the information from the logs in a Word document, then send it to support@ablebits.com. Thank you in advance.

Hello there,

When using my email templates, the subjects of my emails automatically change to the name of the chosen template - even if my templates do not contain a macro for this. Can you please assist?

Hello Caitlin,

One of the by design features of Shared Email Templates is that if the Subject field in your email is empty, it will be automatically filled with the name of the pasted template unless you use the ~%Fill macro to fill the Subject field with certain text or the ~%Add macro to add certain text to the Subject field.

Stephen Feehily says:
June 10, 2022 at 5:32 pm

Having some issues lately. Every time I try to use Shared Email Templates I get this message "Add-in error: The add-in couldn't be updated automatically. Please update it from the Office Store." When I click update it goes to the add-in page but no update is required. Then when I go back to Outlook Shared Email Templates has loaded correctly. But then it happens again, and again, and again, so every time I send an email that I need access to my templates I go through this rigamarole.
Any ideas?

Thanks.

Hello Stephen,

Thank you for your comment. Sorry to hear that you are having difficulties with our add-in.

Please click on the three-dots icon in the bottom-right corner of the add-in pane, choose About and send us a screenshot of the window you see to support@ablebits.com. Also, please specify what OS and Outlook version you use. We'll look into the issue and try to help.

Shelby J Vanderwilt says:
April 13, 2022 at 4:00 pm

I am trying to edit a template and I do not have editor access even though I am the one who created the account and manages it. I would also like to give someone else edit access but It will not let me. I assume that is because it's not recognizing me as the admin/editor?

Hi everyone,
a question fo you, please: I use your addon on Outlook (M.Office standard 2019).
Is it possible to save email and password to login more quickly?
Every time I accidentally logon/logoff the fields are blank, and that's a litte annoying... The checkbox "remember me" does not work unfortunatly.
(using it in the webmail [Office365] it works perfectly and saves the mail/password as you would expect)

Thank you very much

Hi Martìn,

Thank you for your comment.

Sorry, but autofilling of login and password fields is a browser feature. Since we have no control over this, we are not able to help you. Although, it is really odd that Microsoft hasn't implemented this possibility in their browser, in which Shared Email Templates opens in Outlook Desktop.

If you have any other questions or need further assistance, please feel free to email us at support@ablebits.com.

James de Berardis says:
May 4, 2021 at 8:36 am

Hi Guys,
I added it to our 365 tenant today and am already impressed by what it can do. We use a lot of canned responses and the guys have used signatures in the past. this is unfortunately un-fit and static. The macros in this are fantastic!

One question however, when will you integrate the user logins with OAuth /O365? I note one of the comments above having trouble with their login, SSO with 365 would make it much easier.

Hi James,

Thank you for your feedback.

About SSO. For us, it’s all about the security of your sensitive data. We have not implemented Office account-level SSO because we cannot afford to have permanent access to your inbox, OneDrive and SharePoint. That is why, every user should have their own account for Shared Email Templates, and when our add-on needs to access the currently opened mail item, OneDrive file or SharePoint item, we ask for a time-limited access token. So, you can be sure that the add-on does not monitor your data and does not share Office 365 access tokens between sessions, devices or web-services. Use end-to-end encryption (passworded teams) and be confident that we could never get any of your data, even in theory.

The user can now remember login/password, so they won’t need to enter the credentials on every add-on start or when accessing their OneDrive/SharePoint.

James de Berardis says:
June 9, 2021 at 7:44 am

Hi Eugene,

Apologies, I did not see your reply until today. Thank you for the very candid and open response. I appreciate your position and it does make perfect sense. I will pick up my evaluation of your product as i really do like the way it functions - especially how I envisage it working in our business.

Thanks again for taking the time to respond directly.

All the best,
James

Евгения Гекман says:
November 13, 2020 at 9:05 am

Hello!

I have used your application for Microsoft Outlook since last year. Last week, after the Windows update, the application began to require my e-mail and password (I have already forgotten both because they were never mentioned before). I tried to enter ALL of my e-mails to recover the password, but no reaction (wrong email). What should I do? Thank you!

Is it possible to reorder templates in a folder?

Katerina Bespalaya (Ablebits Team) says:
March 11, 2020 at 3:38 pm

Hello,

Thank you for your question. Unfortunately, it is not possible. We have not implemented this option considering possible performance issues and UI responsiveness slowdown. Sorry for any inconvenience.

José Lucas Mognon says:
February 7, 2020 at 1:32 am

Hi guys!

Just discovery what appear to be a bug on Outlook Shared Template Plugin: I can't login on the server (through outlook client and online, or even through https://email-templates.app/#/signin) when I'm connect via my OpenVPN client. The problem is promptly solved when I disconnect my VPN.... Could you please help me on how to solve that problem?

Katerina Bespalaya (Ablebits Team) says:
February 7, 2020 at 9:33 am

Hi José,

Sorry to hear that you are having difficulties with our add-in. One of our support service agents has just replied to you by email. Please send us the details requested in the email message. They will help our developers understand what's causing the issue and provide you with further instructions. Thank you.

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If you have any questions or issues with this add-in, please feel free to post your concerns in the comments area. As soon as we answer, a notification message will be sent to your e-mail. If you do not want to share your thoughts in public, please contact us at support@ablebits.com.