Outlook email templates

Outlook does not have a template feature. It has four, they were added at different times for different reasons, and which ones you can see depends on whether you are in classic Outlook for Windows, the new Outlook, or Outlook on the web. That is why template instructions you find online so often describe a menu that is not on your screen.

By Rex (Kuan Hsiung Chen) · Updated 30 August 2026

Work out which Outlook you are in first

This one question decides everything below.

• Classic Outlook for Windows — the long-standing desktop app with the full ribbon. Has Quick Parts, Quick Steps, .oft template files, and the My Templates add-in. The most capable of the three.
• New Outlook for Windows / Outlook for Mac — rebuilt on the web codebase. My Templates is there; Quick Parts and .oft largely are not.
• Outlook on the web — the browser client. My Templates, and that is essentially it.

The four mechanisms, and what each is actually for

Quick Parts — reusable formatted blocks

Select text in a draft, then Insert → Quick Parts → Save Selection to Quick Part Gallery. To use it later, open Insert → Quick Parts and pick it, or type the entry name and press F3.

Quick Parts holds formatting, images and tables well, and the F3 trick makes it the only built-in option that is close to keyboard-driven. The catches: it is classic-Outlook-for-Windows only, and the gallery lives in a local NormalEmail.dotm file on that machine — so it does not follow you to a laptop, a Mac, or the browser, and it is easy to lose in a rebuild.

My Templates — snippets that roam

An add-in rather than a core feature. In a compose window, open it from the toolbar (under the … / Apps menu in the newer clients), then + Template to save one.

Its real advantage is that the snippets are stored in your mailbox, so the same list appears in Outlook on the web and in the desktop clients that host the add-in. The cost is that it is a side panel you click in, it is happier with short and lightly formatted text, and there is no shortcut and no variable prompting.

Quick Steps — a template plus an action

Home → Quick Steps → Create New, choose a reply or forward action, and use Show Options to prefill the body. What you get is one click that replies with set text and files the message, or forwards it to a fixed address, or applies a category.

Reach for this when the text is only half of what you do — triage flows where every one of these gets the same answer and then goes to the same folder. It is a poor fit for a general snippet library.

.oft files — whole-message templates

File → Save As → Outlook Template saves an entire draft, including subject, attachments and recipients. Open it later via New Items → More Items → Choose Form, which is exactly as buried as it sounds.

Right answer for a recurring whole message — a monthly report, an onboarding pack with the same three attachments. Wrong answer for a paragraph you want mid-reply.

Where all four run out

Whichever you pick, you hit the same three walls.

• No fillable variables. None of them prompt you for the name, the date, or the order number. You insert the text and then go hunting through it for the placeholders, which is where the wrong client's name ends up in the wrong email.
• No real keyboard path. Quick Parts' F3 is the only exception, and it is confined to one client on one operating system. Everything else costs a menu dive per insertion — small, but you pay it every single time.
• They stop at Outlook's edge. The same sign-off you use in email is the one you want in LinkedIn, in Zendesk, in a Jira comment. A template stored inside Outlook is a template you retype everywhere else.

And underneath all of it: templates only help with messages you have written before. The reply that needs actual thought gets no assistance from any of these features, which is the same ceiling Gmail's built-in templates hit from the other direction.

What to use instead, and when

If Outlook's own features cover you, use them — they are free and already installed. The two reasons to add something are the variable prompting and the reach beyond Outlook.

• If you live in the installed Outlook app, you need a desktop expander that works at the OS level — TextExpander and similar. A browser extension cannot reach into a native app window, and anyone who tells you otherwise is selling something. Here is an honest read on that category.
• If you use Outlook on the web, a Chrome extension can do it, because the compose box is an ordinary web text field.

That second case is where Keyjot fits. One keyboard shortcut opens a command window at the cursor; number keys 1–9 pick a template; variable slots are prompted for before the text is inserted, so the placeholders are filled by construction rather than by memory. Because it works at the text-field level, the same library covers Outlook on the web, Gmail, LinkedIn, and support consoles. And for the replies no template covers, it is also an AI text expander — it can draft from the thread you are looking at and then wrap the draft in your saved greeting and sign-off.