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 are done with learning how to manage your private folders and templates, move on to sharing templates with your colleagues.

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

Download cheat sheet

• The 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 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 panel:

To search in the names of folders and templates and content 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, teams) at once, you can switch to the Selection mode by clicking the icon to the right of the Search field. In the mode, you can check folders and templates and quickly perform the needed operation with them altogether by clicking the Copy, Move, or Delete button at the top:

Under the Search field there are the buttons to select the view:

1. The All Templates view, click it to see all your templates and folders.
2. Click this icon to see only templates that you marked as Favorite.
3. Select this view to see only private templates and folders.
4. This button lets you see all your shared templates.
5. Click this button 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.

Create 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 a folder, description if you like, and click the Save button:

Your new folder is saved to My Templates, and when you are standing on it, you can see its name and description in the preview pane. You can Edit, Copy, Move, or Delete the folder with the help of the action buttons:

Create new template

Here is a quick Create and manage templates cheat sheet, click on the button below to download it:

Download cheat sheet

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

Tip. You can right-click a folder and pick the New Template in Browser option to open a new template in the Shared Email Templates web application:

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

Tip. To turn a text in your email into a template, select the required paragraph and start creating a new template by clicking the New template button in the bottom left corner:

The selected text will appear in the new template:

Working with templates

When you stand on a template, you can see its content and the possible actions:

1. The Paste icon, click it to have a template inserted into your email right away. The template will appear where the cursor stands.
   Note. If there is a selected text passage in your message body and you click this icon, the selected text will be deleted and replaced by a template.
2. Click Edit in Browser to open your template in browser and edit it there.
3. Click Edit to open the edit mode and change text, formatting, or name of a template.
4. Add to Favorites means that your template will be added to the Favorite Templates folder. In this case, you can 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 to select a folder to paste the template to.
6. Also, you can Move the template to another folder.
7. You can Delete your template by clicking this icon.
   Note. There is no opportunity to undelete a template, so, if you delete it, you won't be able to restore it.
8. For a more handy view, you can click the Maximize button. To get back to the normal view, click the Restore icon in the top right corner.

How to edit template

In the Edit mode, you can not only adjust the text formatting of your templates but also insert macros, create a table, add or edit a hyperlink, view HTML, and insert a template:

1. The Insert Macro button. Learn all the opportunities macros give you on the How to use macros in your templates page.
2. Click Message Fields to add text to the To, Cc, Bcc, Subject fields of an email.
3. Click Message Attachments to attach a file from OneDrive, SharePoint, URL, or to see the list of attached files.
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. The Insert/Edit Hyperlink button. Select the text you are going to add a hyperlink to, click this icon, enter a URL and a title that will appear when you hover over the linked text in your template.
7. The View HTLM button. In this mode, you can edit your template in HTML and all the changes will be saved. But please keep in mind all the peculiarities Outlook has with HTML and CSS.
8. The View Template Content mode shows you the template text in HTML, all the message fields and attached files.
9. Click Paste to insert the template right after you are done with its editing.

Add message fields

To get the To, Cc, Bcc, Subject fields filled in automatically while using a certain template, click the Message Fields icon:

Enter email addresses, text for the Subject fields and click Save:

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

Add attachments

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

Decide whether you will attach a file from OneDrive, SharePoint, or URL and click the Plus icon 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 template into message body

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

Note, if you do not use the ~%FillSubject or ~%AddSubject macros, the Subject field will be automatically filled with the name of the template.

• If you edit a template, you can paste the entire text or a part of it.

  To insert the entire template, do not select any text and click Paste:

  

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

  

• To paste the template without opening it, stand on the template in the list and click the Paste icon in the preview pane:
  

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

Copy template to clipboard

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

Back up, export and import templates

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