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Living in Outlook: Advanced Message Templates

The Living in Outlook series is about sharing tips and workflows around real-world scenarios. We’ll start the conversation with a topic – you can add to it by posting your tips and workflows in the comments!

In my last blog post I talked about how I use Message Templates and how to create them.

You may have noticed in my example template that I have special text to remind me to insert updated graphs and tables into my status reports. While I could continue to do this manually and risk forgetting to add them, I instead decided to save myself tons of time by using the “Paste as link” functionality in Outlook!

For this to work, I have an Excel file which I keep up-to-date with the latest data and graphs for each status report.

Here’s how to insert a link to those graphs so that the template is always up to date:

1. Copy the content from the Excel sheet (graph or table).  

2. In Outlook, place the cursor where you want the graph to be, click on the lower half of the Past Button and choose Paste Special.

 Paste sub menu
3. In the dialog box that appears choose Paste link on the left-hand side. Then choose Microsoft Office Excel Chart Object (or Microsoft Office Excel Worksheet Object for tables), and click OK. Paste special menu
4. And that’s it! The next time you open up the template file, you will get the following prompt: Update data prompt
5. Choose Yes and the latest changes to the graphs and tables in your Excel workbook are now present in your template! New message with charts

Thanks to the power of Outlook message templates and Paste Link, updating the information in your templates is easier than ever.

As always, let us know how you use this feature to make your Outlook experience even better!

Jed Brown
Outlook Program Manager

Posted: Monday, November 17, 2008 6:55 PM by outblog

Comments

Helen said:

Please could you tell me how I can change the colour of the archive folders or folder names in Outlook so that I stop transferring current emails into the Archive section by mistake when I should be storing them in the current Personal Folders.   At the moment, they all look the same down the side of my screen and is confusing.

Thank you for your help.

# November 19, 2008 7:37 AM

Sarah said:

I'm a college sophomore, so my knowledge of Microsoft Office has been pretty much PowerPoints and Word .docs up until this point.

I started playing around with Outlook a few days, and it's beyond me what I've been missing out on all along. I've already used message templates like the ones from your previous post, and depending on which one comes first, my knowledge for Excel or a need for a chart, I'll definitely use this one as well, :-).

If you have any pointers on how to link OneNote and Outlook, that would be super.

# November 23, 2008 3:44 PM

tsbarr said:

I have set up a rule to reply with a template when I receive emails from a certain sender.  The problem is the sender address is "name@domain.com on behalf of name@domain.com".  What I want is for the reply to be sent to the on behalf address, and that works if I just reply manually to the email - the on behalf address is populated in the "To:" field.  However, when the rule replies with the template, it sends to the actual sender's address, not the on behalf address.  Is there anyway to have the on behalf address used in this situation???

I am pretty familiar with VB for Excel, but not

for Outlook.  Since there is an option in Rules and Alerts to run a script when a message comes in, I would think you could write one that 1) grabs the on behalf of address (using the SentOnBehalfofName property), 2) opens the reply template, 3) puts that address in the "To:" field, then sends.  What do you think?  If that sounds feasible, is that something you could give me some direction on?

I have tried other message boards, and no one has been able to offer help on this, so I would REALLY appreciate it if you, or anyone who read this, can.

Thanks,

Tim

tim.barr@live.com

# December 6, 2008 2:36 PM

TimBurraston said:

Jed, I've tried this using Office Outlook 2007 / Excel 2007.  The problem is that when I open the template it takes ages (and I mean ages) to update the linked charts.  If I open the source workbook before opening the template, it ignores the fact it's already opened and appears to open it iteratively for each chart.  Once it has done all this, I finally get the message prompt you describe. I do not get the same behaviour in Word 2007 - it recognises that the source workbook is open and th updates are almost immediate.

FYI, I tried editing the links (ALT+F9) in the template and setting them to manual (removed the /a) but this behaviour still persists.

Thanks,

Tim.

# December 15, 2008 12:06 PM

Lee Kennedy said:

is there a similar technique I could use to attach the latest version of an (excel) file? the attachment will always be found in the same folder location with the same file name.

If not, how would you suggest I approach this?

Thanks. Lee.

# December 16, 2008 1:32 PM
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