Create and manage your email templates

In Shared Email Templates for Outlook

As soon as you signed in to your Shared Email Templates account, it's time to get to know the add-in pane and the ways to create folders and templates. When you're done with learning how to manage your private folders and templates, move on to sharing templates with your colleagues.

You can have a look at or download the How to organize your templates cheat sheet:

Download cheat sheet

• Shared Email Templates pane and its elements
• Create new folder
• Create new template
• Working with templates
  • How to edit template
  • Add message fields
  • Add attachments
• Paste template into message body
• Copy template to clipboard
• Back up, export and import templates

The Shared Email Templates pane and its elements

You can create private and shared templates and collect them in folders. The storage of your private templates is My Templates. Shared templates are stored in teams. Select a template to see its text at the bottom of the add-in pane:

To search in the names of folders and templates and in the contents of templates, folders, and teams, type text into the Search field and press the Enter key or click the Magnifier icon:

To make a search case-sensitive, click Aa:

Also, you can select text in your message body, click the Magnifier icon and get the list of items that contain this text:

To work with several items (templates, folders, and teams) at once, switch to the Selection Mode by clicking the icon to the right of the Search field. In the Selection Mode, you can select the necessary folders and templates to copy, move, or delete them altogether by clicking the corresponding icon at the top:

Select the desired view with the help of the icons that are under the Search field:

1. With the All Templates view, you can see all your templates and folders.
2. To see only templates marked as favorite, click Favorite Templates.
3. Select this view to see only private templates and folders.
4. Click Team Templates to see all your shared templates.
5. Click this icon to see all your shortcuts.
6. If you're using a subscription plan that includes Mail Merge, click here to see all your mail merge campaigns.
7. Opt for the Signatures view to create and edit your signatures.

Create a new folder

To create a new folder for your templates, right-click My Templates or a team and select New Folder:

Enter the name of your folder, add a description (if necessary), and click the Save button:

Your new folder is saved to My Templates. When you select the folder, you can see its name and description in the preview pane. You can Edit, Copy, Move, and Delete the folder or visit the relevant help page on our website by clicking the corresponding action button:

Create a new template

This is a quick Create and manage your templates cheat sheet:

Download cheat sheet

To create a new template, select the folder where you want to see your template and click the New Template button:

Tip. You can open a new template in the Shared Email Templates web app by right-clicking a folder and opting for New Template in Browser:

Enter the name of your template, its text, and click Save:

Tip. To turn some text that you have in your email message into a template, select this text and start creating a new template by clicking the New Template button on the Shared Email Templates pane:

The selected text will appear in the new template:

Working with templates

On selecting a template, you can see its contents and possible actions:

1. Insert a template into your email right away by clicking the Paste icon. The template will appear where the cursor stands.
   Note. If there's a selected text fragment in your message body, it will be replaced by the pasted template.
2. To open and edit the template in your default browser, click Edit in browser.
3. Open the template in the Edit mode to change the template text, formatting, or name.
4. By clicking Add to favorites you'll add the template to the Favorite Templates folder. In this case, you'll be able to use the template from both My Templates and Favorite Templates.
5. If you click the Copy icon, your template will be copied and the add-in will ask you to select a folder to paste the template into.
6. Also, you can Move the template to another folder.
7. You can Delete your template by clicking this icon.
   Note. It's not possible to undo this action. If you delete a template, you won't be able to restore it.
8. If necessary, you can maximize the preview pane. To get back to the standard view, click the Restore icon in the upper-right corner of the preview pane.

How to edit a template

In the Edit mode, you can adjust the text formatting, insert macros, create tables, add and edit hyperlinks, view HTML, and insert the template:

1. Here's the Insert macro icon. For detailed information on Shared Email Templates macros, visit the How to use macros in templates page.
2. Click Message fields to add text to the To, Cc, Bcc, and Subject field of an email.
3. Click Message attachments to attach a file from OneDrive, SharePoint, or URL.
4. Click Table to insert a table into your template.
   You can learn more about tables in our How to create and format tables blog post.
5. Click this icon to clear formatting of the selected text.
6. Select the text you're going to add a hyperlink to, click the Insert/edit hyperlink icon, enter a URL and a title that will appear when you hover the cursor over the linked text in your template.
7. In the View HTLM mode, you can edit your template in HTML and all the changes will be saved, but keep in mind all the Outlook peculiarities relating to HTML and CSS.
8. The View template content shows you HTML as well as the filled message fields and attached files.
9. Click Paste to insert the template right after you're done with editing.

Add message fields

To get the To, Cc, Bcc, or Subject field filled in automatically when you use a certain template, click the Message fields icon:

Enter email addresses for the To, Cc, and Bcc fields and text for the Subject field. Then click Save:

If there are some data saved, the icon will be marked with a blue dot:

Add attachments

To select the files to be attached when you use a certain template, click the Message attachments icon:

Decide whether you want to attach a file from OneDrive, SharePoint, or URL and click the plus sign on the right. Select the file and click Close:

If there are some files attached, the icon will be marked with a blue dot:

Paste a template into the message body

You can paste a template both if it's open for editing or closed.

• When editing a template, you can paste the entire text or a part of it.

  To insert the entire template, click Paste:

  

  If you want to paste a part of the template, simply select this part and then click Paste:

  

• To paste the template without opening it, find the template in the list on the Shared Email Templates pane and click the Paste icon that is on the left of the template name:
  

  To insert a part of the template text, select this part and click the Paste icon in the preview pane:
  

Copy a template to the clipboard

To copy the text of a template to the clipboard, right-click the template and select Copy to Clipboard:

Back up, export and import templates

To back up your templates, export or import them, refer to the Back up data in Shared Email Templates guide.

See also

How to set signatures