How to use Outlook’s “My Templates” add-in for quick text entry

Almost everyone who uses email at work types the same sentences several times a day. Save time by using “My Templates”, Microsoft Outlook’s one-click text entry add-in, to save and add phrases of your choice.

“My Templates”

; is a simple yet effective tool for saving sentences and adding them to an email with a single click. It is an Outlook add-in, but is installed automatically in both the Outlook client and Outlook web app, as long as your email account uses a Microsoft Exchange server. This includes Outlook.com and M365 / O365 plans.

The text you add to “My Templates” is automatically synchronized between the Microsoft Outlook client and the Outlook web app, and the tool works identically in both. The process to open “My Templates” is slightly different in the client and web app, but once opened it works the same way.

How to open “My Templates” in the Outlook Desktop Client

Open a new email in the Microsoft Outlook desktop application (or reply to or forward an existing message) and on the “Message” tab, click “View Templates”.

The “My Templates” pane opens on the right side of the email.

How to open my templates in the Outlook Web App

Open a new email in the Microsoft Outlook web app (or reply to or forward an existing message), click the three-dot menu icon at the bottom of the email and choose “My Templates” from the menu.

The “My Templates” pane opens on the right side of the email.

How to use “My Templates” in Microsoft Outlook

From this point on, we’ll be using Outlook’s desktop client to demonstrate how “My Templates” works, but it’s exactly the same in the web app.

“My Templates” comes with some preconfigured phrases that may be useful to you, but let’s add our own. To do this, click on ‘Template’.

Enter a title for the sentence, the sentence itself, and click ‘Save’.

The template is available immediately.

To use it, make sure your cursor is in the body of an email and click on the phrase to add it to the email.

It really is that simple. To edit or delete a template phrase, hover your mouse or touchpad cursor over it to reveal the “Delete” and “Edit” options.

There is no formatting available in “My Templates” except for the ability to use Ctrl + B (Cmd + B on Mac) for bold, Ctrl + I (Cmd + I on Mac) for italics, and Ctrl + U (Cmd + U on Mac) to underline, so change the font or color or add hyperlinks, but there are full email templates for that.