Tips and tricks for Shared Email Templates

Useful pieces of advice for working with Shared Email Templates

Discover handy tips and tricks to maximize your benefit from working with Shared Email Templates in Outlook.

• Pasting text from other sources can break formatting
• Create templates from selected text
• Turn your Outlook drafts into templates
• Use team and profile properties
• Construct your emails and templates with template shortcuts
• Use properties in shortcuts, and vice versa
• Insert same value into different places in message with ~%WhatToEnter macro

More tips and tricks on our blog

• Insert images from OneDrive
• Paste pictures from SharePoint
• Add pictures from URL or clipboard
  • Insert image from URL
  • Add picture from clipboard
• Attach files from OneDrive
• Attach a file from URL
• Use Outlook drafts as templates
• Use drafts with attachments as templates
  • Convert drafts to templates
  • Share drafts with teammates
• WhatToEnter macro overview
  • Add relevant, predefined and repetitive values on the fly
  • Merge macros
  • WhatToAttach macro
• Attach files from SharePoint
• Create fillable templates from datasets
  • Create and use datasets
  • Set up multiple-field dataset
  • Fill in table from dataset
• Conditional formatting in templates
  • Color piece of text
  • Paint paragraph
  • Change color of sentence text
  • Color one word
  • Shade item from the list
  • Color text in table cell
  • Conditionally format emails
• Manage tables in Outlook
  • Create Outlook table
  • Apply formatting to table in Outlook
  • Merge cells in Outlook table
• Auto-fill tables in Outlook
  • Automatically fill in multiple table rows
  • Populate one table with data from different sources
• Create templates with fillable fields, dropdown lists and variables
  • Add fillable fields to templates
  • Insert dropdown fields in templates
• Conditional formatting in tables
  • Change font color in a table cell
  • Highlight cells in Outlook table
• Modify borders in Outlook table
  • Change the borders color
  • Adjust borders width
  • Modify borders style in a table
  • Apply multiple modifications to table borders
• Create and use nested Outlook templates
  • Create nested templates using shortcuts
  • Use HTML in datasets
  • Add dynamic fields to dataset

Pasting text from other sources can break formatting

Pasting text from an external source into your template can make HTML inconsistent and break formatting. To fix this, select the text of your template and click the Clear formatting icon on the toolbar:

Then format your template anew.

Another solution is to collect and edit your templates in Outlook and connect an Outlook folder to Shared Email Templates.

Turn your Outlook drafts into templates

If you want to create templates for email messages that should have rich text formatting, you might find it easier to link your Outlook folder with ready-made drafts to Shared Email Templates and use those Outlook drafts as templates. Find the detailed tutorial here: How to use Outlook drafts as templates

Construct your emails and templates with template shortcuts

Template shortcuts are small text units that can be used as building blocks for your templates and emails. To learn more, visit this page: How to create and use template shortcuts

Insert the same value into different places in your email message with the ~%WhatToEnter macro

Suppose that you want to have the same text in a few places in your email message. In this case, you can use the ~%WhatToEnter macro a few times in your template and enter the required value only once.

For example, you need a certain phrase, say, "Price list 2022", in the message body and in the Subject field. Start creating (or editing) your template and, when inserting the ~%WhatToEnter macro into the necessary place in it, select Text field and fill in the Window title and Default value fields like in the screenshot below:

Click Insert.

Then right-click the ~%WhatToEnter macro placeholder that has just appeared in your template and select the Copy Macro Text to Clipboard option:

Put the cursor below the text of your template, click the Insert macro icon, choose Fill Subject from the Select macro menu, and insert the ~%WhatToEnter macro text that you copied into the Fill Subject line field:

As a result, when pasting the template into an email message, you'll have to enter the value for the ~%WhatToEnter macro only once ...

... and the text of interest will appear in all the required places: