Creating An Email Template

Note – This article refers specifically to Outlook 2003, if you have Outlook 2007/2010 please see our article here.

If you spend a lot of time typing the same type of E-mail messages in Outlook, maybe as reminders, or for requests for information, it can be very tedious typing and re-typing the same text over and over again.

Outlook has the ability to use an email template to reduce the tedium of producing these repetitive type E-mails.

To create your email template, first select the format of email you wish to send by clicking on the ‘Tools‘ menu, then select ‘Options‘, and in the ‘Mail Format‘ dropdown select the format you want, (Either plain text, rich text, or HTML) and click on ‘OK

Next, open a new blank E-mail message and compose the basic email template for your message, once you have it how you want, you will need to save it as a template file by clicking on ‘File‘, then ‘Save As‘, in the ‘Save As Type’ dropdown select ‘Outlook Template (*.oft)‘. Give your template a meaningful name, click save, and then close your message.

To use your email template, all you need to do is select ‘File‘, then ‘Choose Form‘ and in the dropdown select ‘User templates in the File System‘ and then select from the list displayed the template you wish to use.