An email template is really nothing more than a standard email
message that you have saved as a template. Here are some suggested
uses for email templates:
Create an expense report form.
Send product information to potential clients.
Create status reports for ongoing projects.
Send messages to specific groups of recipients.
Create a form for information requests or product
registration.
When you need to send similar messages frequently, creating a message template can save you quite a bit of
time, particularly if the message contains a great deal of frequently
used text, graphics, or form elements. You also reduce potential
errors by reusing the same message each time rather than creating
multiple messages from scratch. You can use the template to provide
the bulk of the message, filling in any additional information
required in each particular instance.
1. Creating an Email Template
Creating an email template is as easy as creating an email
message. You can start by opening a new message form, just as you
would if you were sending a new message to a single recipient or
group.
To create an email template from scratch, follow these
steps:
With the Inbox folder open, click the New E-mail
button on the toolbar to open a new mail message form. Enter the
boilerplate text and any information that you want to include
every time you send a message based on this template. For
example, you can specify the subject, address, other headings,
bullets, lists, and tables.
Click File, and then click Save As in the message
form.
In the Save As dialog box, shown in Figure 1, specify a
name for the file. Select Outlook Template in the Save As Type
drop-down list. Outlook 2010 adds an .oft file name extension to
the file name. You can specify a path if you want to save the
file in a different location.
Outlook 2010 opens your My Documents folder with the file type corresponding to the current
item (HTML, Rich Text Format, or Text Only). The default
location for user templates, however, depends on your operating
system. In Microsoft Windows XP, the location is the
<profile>\Application
Data\Microsoft\Templates folder, and in Windows Vista and
Windows 7, it is the
<profile>\AppData\Roaming\Microsoft\Templates
folder, where <profile> is your user
profile folder (which is Documents And
Settings\<user> on most systems
running Windows XP systems, but is
Users\<user> on systems running
Windows Vista and Windows 7). When you select Outlook Template
as the file type, Outlook 2010 automatically switches to your
Templates folder.
Click Save to save the template. Close the message form,
and then click No when asked whether you want to save the
changes.
You can create as many email templates as you need, storing them on your
local hard disk or on a network server. Placing templates on a
network server allows other Outlook users to use them as
well.
2. Using an Email Template
After you create an email template, it's a simple matter to
use the template to create a message by following these
steps:
In Outlook 2010, click New Items on the Home tab on the
ribbon, and then click More Items, Choose Form. Outlook 2010
opens the Choose Form dialog box, as shown in Figure 2.
In the Look In drop-down list (which is set to Standard
Forms Library by default), select the location where the
template is stored. In this example, the template is stored in
the user default template folder. To use this template, select
User Templates In File System.
Select the template from the list, and then click Open to
display a message form based on the template data.
Fill in the message form to include any additional or
modified information, and then send the message as you would any
other.
3. Using a Template with a Contact Group
You can easily send messages to recipients in a contact group
without using a template: Simply start a new message, select the
contact group from the Address Book, and send the message. If the
messages you send to the members of the list are different each time
you use the list, you don't need a template. However, if the
messages contain much the same information time after time, they're
good candidates for templates. For example, you might need to submit
weekly reports to a group of administrators or managers, send task
lists to people who work for you, or broadcast regular updates about
products or services.
You create a template for a contact group the same way that
you create any other email template. The only difference is that you
store the list of recipients within the template. To do so, simply
select the contact group in the appropriate address box when you
create the template. If you don't want the various members of the
group to see the addresses of other members on the list, be sure to
insert the distribution group in the Bcc box rather than in the To
or Cc box.
