Can I make a shortcut to Send Outlook Email from Template?

Question

Using the information provided here, I was able to successfully create an email template and send a message using this template.

However, using this template is quite cumbersome - one must go to New Items->More Items->Choose Form...->Change "Look In" path to User Templates In File System->Open.

It's almost faster to just "Forward" a sent email and delete the extraneous forwarding metadata. Can anyone please tell me how to speed this up?

Answer 1

For email templates I use a lot, I simply place a shortcut on your desktop linked to the template. All you need to do is go find your template in Windows Explorer, right click on it and choose Sent to > Desktop (create shortcut)

As it is stated in the article, here are the paths to the templates locations (unless you saved your template elsewhere);

Windows 7 and Windows Vista
c:\users\username\appdata\roaming\microsoft\templates

Windows XP
c:\documents and settings\username\application data\microsoft\templates

Then all you have to do is use the shortcut to open your template in one step.

Answer 2

I found some info about doing this with a macro, and it works in 2013, but I don't have 2010 to test it on.

If you don't have macros enabled, you will need to go into the Trust Center and enable all macros, which Outlook advises against doing because malicious code could run. Then you have to add a custom group to the ribbon and add macros to that custom group. Then you can get down to making the macro for a new message from a .oft template file. (more MSDN instructions here)

The macro code will look like this:

Sub TemplateName()
    Set msg = Application.CreateItemFromTemplate("C:\Users\xyz\Desktop\template.oft")
    msg.Display
End Sub

Answer 3

If you find the template file in your filesystem (see CharlieRB's answer), then you can drag it to your Taskbar and add it to the Outlook quick menu, so it appears when you right-click. That way it appears next to the New Email and New Meeting shortcuts.

Answer 4

Thanks to "CharlieRB". You can further make it faster by adding a Global shortcut key as follows.

Add a Global Shortcut key to the item on the desktop as shown in the screenshot. Right click on the Desktop item-> Properties

Answer 5

I faced the same issue and didn't like any of the answers, so after a bit of experimenting, this is my solution:

1. save the e-mail template into templates; take a note where this template folder is (you can simply right click on the dir and select "copy" and later paste that path into Windows "Exploder").
2. in my Outlook mail account, create a subfolder called "templates" (or whatever you want to call it)
3. in Windows "Exploder" go to the filesystem folder where I saved the template as a file - this is why you needed to take a note where it was
4. drag this e-mail template file into the templates folder in my Outlook
5. whenever I want to use that template, just click on the template in the templates folder in my Outlook maildirs, or in my case in Favorites since I've added the templates maildir folder in my Favorites.

NOTE: I haven't tested this against the "new" Outlook (new in 2023, the one which is probably called Outlook 365, or whatnot, which can't even open EML or PST files - I've tried that bad upgrade and went quickly back to "old" Outlook). There's a chance this may not work there either (since it's crap - the New Outlook that is).

You're welcome :-).