If you find yourself frequently
answering similar emails in Outlook, I have a great tip for you. You can save your replays as templates so you can access them whenever you need. This way instead of writing out your text from scratch every time, you can save time and use
predefined text blocks with a click of a button. Let me show you. (electronic music) Before we get started, a brief thanks to Skillshare,
the sponsor of today's video. Now I have a special link for you. It's in the description of this video. I'm going to chat more
about them and their classes towards the end so stay tuned for that. Now there are two great methods
you can use to answer emails with a saved reply template. Number one, the free My Templates add-in, and number two, the Quick Parts feature. Let's start with My Templates. Now what's great about My
Templates is that they're stored within your mailbox. So they're also available to you when you're using another
computer or Outlook on the web. Let's take a look. By default, the My Templates add-in
should be turned on in Outlook as long as you have an Exchange account. Now it's not available
for POP or IMAP accounts. You can check if you have the add-in by clicking on Get Add-ins up here. Under My add-ins, you're going to see it
in the section of add-ins that are provided by Microsoft. Now it's available from
Outlook 2013 onwards. If for any reason it's not turned on, you can enable it here. So how do you use these
templates to reply to an email? When you're in the reply, you'll see View Templates
on the message tab in the ribbon all the way on the right. Click it and it's going to
open the templates pane. It's going to come with some
sample responses already. When you hover over the templates, you'll get the option to
delete and to edit templates. By clicking the plus down here, we get to create our own templates. But before we do, please take a moment to
subscribe to my channel in case you haven't done so already. So to create our own
template, click the plus here. Assign a name to it, and down here, you can add the text for your response. Now under surface, there are no formatting
options for the templates. So you can change the font size, color, or add links to your text, which to be honest is quite limiting. But what you can do is to write the text in another application, so
Microsoft Word, for example. And then there add all
the formatting you need and then copy and paste your
text into template here. Like this. This way, you can even add
links to your response. When you're done with
the response, click Save, which will add it to
the available templates. Now just a heads up! The My Templates add-in has
a total size of 32 kilobytes for all templates. So in case you get an error message when you try to save that
looks like this or this, you need to reduce the amount of content so that the combined size of all templates is less than 32 kilobytes. So don't go overboard
and you should be fine. So next time you need
to reply to a message, simply click View Templates
and select the one you want. It will copy the text into your response, just two clicks and you're done. And of course, you're not just limited
to using these templates for replies. You can also use them when
you're composing a new message. The other option is to use Quick Parts, a feature that Microsoft
introduced in Outlook 2007. Now with Quick Parts, you can basically store
reusable pieces of content and galleries. They can include text, images, tables, and even formatting. Now here's the thing though, they are only available
locally on your computer they're not automatically synced. Let me show you. To create a template with Quick Parts, either type the text you want or use the text from an existing reply. Highlight the part of
the text you want to use as a standard response. Then go to the Insert tab and over here on the
right in the text group, you're going to see Quick Parts. Click it and you'll get the
option to save the selection as a so-called building block
to the Quick Part gallery. In this window here, you can give this Quick Part a name. With the dropdown for category, you can organize your Quick
Parts in separate groups for creating new categories. Now I don't need that so I'm
going to go with general. Click on OK. So next time you want to use this text when you reply to a message, just click on insert Quick Parts and select a template you want. A faster way is to add the gallery to your quick access toolbar. Just right click on the icon in the ribbon and select Add to Quick Access Toolbar. Then you can make your
selection from here. And an even faster way
is to use auto complete. Just type the name of the Quick Part, in my case it's test,
hit F3 and it's there. It's not even necessary
to type the whole name as long as it's unique. So in my case typing t
e and then F3 is enough. The great advantage of Quick Parts is that the building blocks aren't
just limited to text. So in this case, let's say we're out of
stock for a particular item, and we would only respond
to customer requests that come in with an alternative item. In my saved response, I included some texts to respond
to the customer's request. I also added a picture of
this alternative product and its specs, all conveniently saved and
available with just a few clicks. If you right click on any saved response, you get the option to organize and delete. From here, you see all
building blocks you have. You can edit their
properties, delete them, or insert new ones. I already mentioned that the
Quick Parts are saved locally in your computer. So the last thing I want to show you is how you can export them. The folder they're saved in
is called NormalEmail.dotm. To find it, open the Windows File Explorer and in the address box
here, type in this link. Once you're done, hit enter. And there you're going to
find the NormalEmail.dotm template file which you
can export to another PC. I hope these two options
will help you save time composing emails or
answering repeated requests. Now if you like to learn new skills or upgrade your existing skills, make sure you check out
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that the first 1000 people who click the link in the
description of this video are going to get a free
trial of Skillshare premium. This way you can explore your creativity without getting disturbed by Ads. Many thanks to Skillshare
for sponsoring this video and supporting my channel. If you enjoyed this video, don't forget to give it a thumbs up. And if you want to improve your skills, consider subscribing to this channel. Thank you for watching and
I'll see you in the next video. (electronic music)
