Shared Email Templates is designed to let you avoid retyping the same messages and replies in Outlook. But what if you need to insert certain information into several templates you use? For instance, your email address, company name, social media accounts, etc. We’ve developed the Properties feature to make you avoid retyping/copy-pasting the same info in templates.
For each team and profile, you can create a set of named values and use them in your templates with the help of macros. Thus, instead of typing or copy-pasting commonly used information, you add it as properties to your profile or team and then simply add a macro with this property.
Profile properties
You can create properties for your Shared Email Templates profile account and for each team you have. You can use the profile properties in any template wherever it is located: in your private folders or in a team. But if you create a template in a team, you can use properties of this team only and not the other ones.
To edit or create profile properties, click the three dots at the bottom-right corner of the add-in pane and select Profile:
Find My Properties and click the Edit Properties icon next to it:
To create a new property, click the Add Property button:
Enter the name and value of the new property:
Once you click the Save button, you'll see your new property in the Custom section. In the preview pane, you can see the content of the property and Edit and Delete icons:
Team properties
To see the properties of your team or create new ones, stand on the team of interest and click the Edit Properties icon:
Click the Add Property button:
Enter the name and value of the new property and click Save:
You'll see your new property in the Custom section. In the preview pane, you can see the content of the property and Edit and Delete icons:
DateFormat property
To set a default format for dates, add DateFormat to your team or profile properties. If the default date format is intended for your team templates, create DateFormat as a team property. If it is for your personal templates only (My Templates), DateFormat should be a profile property.
Here is the list of available default formats:
- m/d/yyyy
- m/d/yy
- dddd, mmmm d, yyyy
- mmmm d, yyyy
- mm/dd/yyyy
- mm/dd/yy
- dd/mm/yyyy
- dd/mm/yy
- dd-mmm-yyyy
- yyyy-mm-dd
Abbreviations and their meaning:
- yy—two-digit year (e.g. 21)
- yyyy—four-digit year (e.g. 2021)
- m—one-digit month (e.g. 4)
- mm—two-digit month (e.g. 04)
- mmm—three-letter abbreviation for month (e.g. Apr)
- mmmm—month spelled out in full (e.g. April)
- d—one-digit day of the month (e.g. 2)
- dd—two-digit day of the month (e.g. 02)
- ddd—three-letter abbreviation for day of the week (e.g. Sat)
- dddd—day of the week spelled out in full (e.g. Saturday)
DateLocale property
To set a default language tag for dates, add DateLocale to your team or profile properties. If the language tag is intended for your team templates, create DateLocale as a team property. If it is for your personal templates only (My Templates), DateLocale should be a profile property.
Please find the full list of possible languages for your dates and their codes (tags) on the Supported locale codes page. In the two first columns, find the language and country you need, copy the code from the third corresponding column and paste it into the property value field in Shared Email Templates.
For example, here is the default language property for the French language spoken in Luxembourg:
How to insert properties into templates
You can create up to 32 custom properties for your profile and each team and use them in your templates. Besides, you can insert your Outlook mailbox properties as well.
To get the mailbox, account, team properties inserted into your templates, you need to add the corresponding macro.
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Open an existing template or create a new one and click Edit:
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In the text of the template, place the cursor where you want to put a property and click the Insert macro icon:
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Select one of the macros for a property:
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~%MailboxProperty[] inserts the email address, display name, or timezone of your Outlook mailbox. When you select this macro, you will see a drop-down list with items to choose from:
Example of use:
The email is sent at 12:00 p.m., the account timezone is ~%MailboxProperty[TimeZone]. -
~%ProfileProperty[] inserts the user name, first name, last name, full name, birthday, email address of your Shared Email Templates profile (predefined properties) and the custom properties you created. When you pick this macro, you will see a drop-down list with items to select from:
Example of use:
Find me on Facebook: ~%ProfileProperty[FacebookAccount] -
If you create a shared template in a team, you can use the ~%TeamProperty[] macro. This macro retrieves team properties information and puts it into your message. The initially available properties are the display name, description, team password, but you can create your custom ones. You can select a property from the drop-down list:
Example of use:
Find us on LinkedIn: ~%TeamProperty[LinkedInAccount]
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~%MailboxProperty[] inserts the email address, display name, or timezone of your Outlook mailbox. When you select this macro, you will see a drop-down list with items to choose from:
Discover more capabilities of Properties
What about using HTML, templates, macros, and shortcuts in properties? Visit our blog to discover more ways to benefit from the feature: Shared Email Templates tips and tricks