Create and Use Templates in Outlook for Microsoft Office 2016

This tutorial will explain how to create and use email templates in Microsoft Office Outlook 2016.

If you find that you are sending the same email message numerous times, you may want to think about creating email templates to save yourself the time of re-writing the same message. This tutorial will explain how to create, save, and access your personal templates and two alternative methods of accessing them.

How to create and save an email template:

1. Launch Outlook and select New Email on the Home tab to create a new message.
   Hint: You can also use the keyboard short cut Ctrl+Shift+M to create a new message when you are in Outlook.
   
   
   
   
2. Fill out the subject and the body of the email.
   Note: If you have a signature created for outgoing email, you will want to delete it from the current email before saving it as a template or else you will have a double signature whenever you open the template.
   
   
3. Click on the FILE tab to access the Backstage area and choose Save As.
   
   
4. Save the message as Outlook Template(*.oft).
   
   
   Note: Outlook will automatically save the file to the default Templates location.
   C:\Users\YOURUSERNAME\AppData\Roaming\Microsoft\Templates\*.oft

How to access an email template:

Default folder access

1. Go to the Developer tab, click Choose Form and select User Templates in File System.
   
   Note: You may have to enable the Developer tab if it is not showing on the ribbon.
   Skip to step 2 if the Developer tab is already on the ribbon. Otherwise,
   
   1. 1. Click on the File tab to access the Backstage area and click on Options.
      2. Next, click on Customize Ribbon.
         
         
      3. In the right pane, check the Developer box and click the OK button.
         
         
2. Double click on the template name to open it.
   
   Note: You may be prompted to confirm that you want to open this type of file.
   If you are, click Open.
   
   
3. Modify the text as needed.
4. Add email recipients
5. Click Send.
   Note: Modifying the body of the message or its subject will not change the underlying template. To modify the template, follow steps outlined in Create an email template above.

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Mail Tree folder access

Alternatively, you may want to save the template to an easier to find location other than the default Outlook templates location. For example, you may want to create a new folder, such as MyTemplates in your Outlook mail tree to hold the new template. To do this:

1. Right click over the name of your email account in the mail tree to open the options drop-down and select New Folder.
   
   
2. Enter a name for the folder in the textbox that opens and hit enter on your keyboard.
   
   
3. Your new Folder will appear in the tree.
   
   

To add templates to this folder:

1. Navigate, in Windows Explorer, to the default Templates location.
   C:\Users\YOURUSERNAME\AppData\Roaming\Microsoft\Templates\*.oft
   
   
2. Left click on the OFT template and drag it to the MyTemplates folder that you created in steps 1 - 3 in the section above.
   
   
   
3. Once you are over the folder, release the left mouse button to copy the file to your new folder.
   
   
   

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