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:
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:
Tip. To change the height of the preview pane, hold down its upper border with the left mouse button and drag up or down:
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:
Note. Before pasting the template, cancel the selection in the message body.
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:
- With the All Templates view, you can see all your templates and folders.
- To see only templates marked as favorite, click Favorite Templates.
- Select this view to see only private templates and folders.
- Click Team Templates to see all your shared templates.
- Click this icon to see all your shortcuts.
- If you're using a subscription plan that includes Mail Merge, click here to see all your mail merge campaigns.
- 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
Note. The HTML code of a template must not contain more than 131,072 symbols.
This is a quick Create and manage your templates 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:
- 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.
- To open and edit the template in your default browser, click Edit in browser.
- Open the template in the Edit mode to change the template text, formatting, or name.
- 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.
- 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.
- Also, you can Move the template to another folder.
- 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.
- 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:
- Here's the Insert macro icon. For detailed information on Shared Email Templates macros, visit the How to use macros in templates page.
- Click Message fields to add text to the To, Cc, Bcc, and Subject field of an email.
- Click Message attachments to attach a file from OneDrive, SharePoint, or URL.
- 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. - Click this icon to clear formatting of the selected text.
- 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.
- 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.
- The View template content shows you HTML as well as the filled message fields and attached files.
- Click Paste to insert the template right after you're done with editing.
Tip. If you need advanced formatting, you can collect and edit your templates in Outlook, and then connect an Outlook folder to Shared Email Templates.
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.
Note. 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.
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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:
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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:
Note. This paste option does not work for templates located in linked Outlook folders.
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:
Tip. Keep the Alt key pressed when clicking Copy to Clipboard to make macros that add information to the message body work and, as a result, copy not the macros themselves but the values they bring.
Compare:
- Copy to Clipboard
Hello,
I'm happy to offer you an additional ~%WhatToEnter{"type":"text","title":"discount","defaultValue":"10% discount","required":true} on any product of your choice.
- Alt+Copy to Clipboard
Hello,
I'm happy to offer you an additional 10% discount on any product of your choice.
Note. The Alt+Copy to Clipboard combination is not supported in Outlook for Mac.
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.
Responses
Greg says:
February 28, 2023 at 9:45 pm
I'm looking for a way to paste a URL into a What to Enter field and have it output a clickable link message.
The message could be the same for every instance the template is used, like "Click here to access your profile".
Is this possible?
Thanks in advance,
Greg
Hello Greg,
Thank you for your question. I have just sent the step-by-step instructions via email. Please check your Inbox.
Greg Steadman says:
January 6, 2023 at 3:39 pm
Is there a way to add formatting to a field? Specifically a phone number?
Hello Greg,
Thank you for your question.
Could you please specify what field exactly you'd like to add formatting to? Please send us an example of your template at support@ablebits.com and point out what kind of formatting and where you want to apply. Thank you.
Amy says:
January 5, 2023 at 3:58 pm
Hello,
Is there any way to hide certain content from non-admin or non-editor teammates?
Specifically, I have tables set up that some of the email templates are linked to. Right now, anyone on the team can see the tables, but I'd like to hide them from these users. I moved the tables to "My Templates", but then any fields in a shared template that references the table(s) don't come up for anyone other than me (presumably since they're stored in "My Templates".
Is there a workaround for this?
Thank you!
Hello Amy,
Thank you for your question.
Unfortunately, there is no such functionality in our add-in at the moment, but I will forward your request to our developers for consideration. Thank you.
Tara says:
April 14, 2021 at 5:33 pm
Hello,
We have a template we are using that has a auto cc function added:
~%FILLCC
However, it keeps replacing anyone we currently have in the cc line with who we want to auto cc. Any way to fix this?
Thanks,
Tara
Hello Tara,
Thank you for your message. It looks like the ~%AddCc macro will suit your needs better. It will keep the email addresses you already have in the Cc field. By the way, you can find all the macros the Shared Email Templates add-in offers here.
Kari says:
October 13, 2020 at 11:51 am
I don't seem to be able to install Shared Templates to our shared mailbox. We have a support mailbox which is shared, but it won't install. The error we get is: Sorry, we can't complete this operation right now. Please try again later.
It installed to my personal email box straight away without a problem.
Is this a known issue with Shared Email Templates?
Kari
Hello Kari,
Thank you for your comment. It is possible to use Shared Email Templates in a shared mailbox. But you don't need to install the add-in for the shared account, you just need to install it for your personal one. Open your shared mailbox, click New Message, and choose the necessary email address in the From field, the Shared Email Templates icon will be available in your Ribbon. Start the add-in to get access to your templates.
Nora says:
July 14, 2020 at 3:41 pm
Do you think you'll be adding the option to save a template with an attachment? I currently use several templates with PDF attachments and i need them to be saved together so i can quickly send them, vs, having to reattach the PDF each time i'm using the template.
Hello Nora,
Thank you for your question. The add-in provides an opportunity to attach the file of interest to your template in a few different ways. You can find them all here.
Brian Jenkins says:
January 28, 2020 at 5:10 pm
Recently downloaded.
Is there a way to add attachments in a stable format at this time?
Katerina Bespalaya (Ablebits Team) says:
January 28, 2020 at 5:32 pm
Hello Brian,
Thank you for your interest in our product. You can attach files to your templates from URL or OneDrive in the current version of Shared Email Templates. Please see more details on how to do this here.
If you have any other questions, please let us know.
Arthur Arellano says:
January 9, 2020 at 4:51 am
I first started with your Template Phrases, then realized you had to manually copy paste each template to all the other in boxes with absolutely no way to import/export all my templates, nor was it cross platform compatible so I had to abandon the software after manually copy pasting 77 templates. The user above is asking the same question we probably are all asking, why is this software so difficult to use, why can't your dev team quickly build an import/export tool? Would be so easy to build from Excel, Word or whatever. Anyway, Ablebits then recommended I use Shared Templates so I was forced to manually add all our templates and unknowingly was blocked from entering anything more than 40. So I spent all this time entering 40 phrases and I'm prevented from entering the rest of our phrases. Where does it say there is a max of 40 templates? Had I known this I would not have wasted even more time. Ablebits doesn't seem to have answers or solutions to users needs. Its basically here's our software use it if you can approach. Its been frustrating trying to set up templates.
Hello Arthur,
Thank you for your feedback and your criticism. The thing is, Shared Email Templates is currently in an early beta-phase (we’ve published it in the middle of December) and we constantly improve and develop it.
Now, it includes the main features only and we eagerly get all the feedback and criticism from our users. Thank you for sharing it with us.
As for the export/import feature, of course, it is in our roadmap. I suppose it will be available after a couple of next releases.
Limits. Now there are 2 plans available: https://www.ablebits.com/outlook-shared-email-templates/index.php#uslp15-blockid-prices-oset
It looks like you have selected the free plan. So, your templates are limited by 40.
Please keep in mind that we don’t rush to roll out new features to interfere with the add-in’s stability. We test each release thoroughly under all supported platforms so please give us some time :) Thank you.
Olivia says:
January 7, 2020 at 3:04 pm
Hello,
Is it possible to upload existing email template files?
Hello Olivia,
Thank you for your question. I'm sorry but currently it is not possible to import your existing templates in Shared Email Templates. For now, you can only create new ones by copy-pasting the templates' text.
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