The blog

For you who pre­fer lis­ten­ing to read­ing, this post is also avail­able as an episode of the ““Done!”” pod­cast:

A rarely used feature

Far too few peo­ple use the tem­plate func­tion avail­able in both Out­look and Gmail. Those who do gain at least three advantages.

• The past­ed tem­plate text is insert­ed at the cur­sor (when you use the tem­plate func­tion) instead of on the line below the cur­sor (when you use the sig­na­ture func­tion). There­fore, you don’t have to edit the email text as much afterward.
• When improve­ments are made to the func­tion, they are designed to make using tem­plates eas­i­er, not to make sig­na­tures eas­i­er to use. An update that improves sig­na­ture han­dling might not help those using the sig­na­ture func­tion for templates.
• If you have tem­plates for text sec­tions that you com­bine to cre­ate the mes­sage you want to send, you can insert sev­er­al text com­po­nents from the tem­plate func­tion suc­ces­sive­ly in the email. After the tem­plate text has been insert­ed, the cur­sor is placed after the last char­ac­ter in the tem­plate, and you can eas­i­ly con­tin­ue writ­ing or choose anoth­er tem­plate com­po­nent. If you use the sig­na­ture func­tion, you can only have entire emails as tem­plates, since you can only have one sig­na­ture per message.

Do this

If you haven’t yet tried the tem­plate func­tion in your email app, do it.

• In Gmail, you’ll find it in the ​“More options” pop-up menu (the three ver­ti­cal dots) when you com­pose a new email.
• In Out­look, you access it by click­ing ​”Apps” and then ​”My Tem­plates” on the ​“Mes­sage” menu when you com­pose a new email.

A notch eas­i­er still

If you use the tem­plate func­tion instead of the sig­na­ture func­tion for tem­plate emails, you’ll make your fre­quent email­ing a bit smoother. If you’re one of those who have already sim­pli­fied by using sig­na­tures as tem­plates, I’d guess this extra sim­pli­fi­ca­tion will suit you perfectly!

How do you do it?

What kinds of emails do you use tem­plates for? Give me exam­ples! I’d love to be inspired to sim­pli­fy my email even more, so I’m curi­ous to hear what makes your work­day a bit smoother. 

(Speak­ing of tem­plates. Have you tried mak­ing tem­plates for say­ing no?)