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Living in Outlook: Using Quick Parts

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 previous posts I have talked about Message Templates and Advanced Message Templates, and how I use them to easily manage status reports or any other type of e-mail that I regularly send. While Message Templates are very powerful, sometimes I just want a simple way to easily insert reusable content at any point when responding to an e-mail. Quick Parts let me do just that.

Quick Parts exist both in Outlook and Word, and allow you to save pieces of content to easily re-use, like the introductory text at the beginning of the Living in Outlook series, as you see in this post. Personally I like to use Quick Parts for all those answers that I repeat over and over again, and am tired of re-typing. I also have a few Quick Parts that contain holiday messages and images that I like to reuse. So let’s get started!

Creating a Quick Part

1. Select the Content You Want to Save

The first step involves selecting the content that you have created and want to reuse. In this example I have selected a table that I fill out and send repeatedly.

 Mail compose item with selected content

2. Add the Selection to Quick Parts

Now that the content is selected click on the Insert tab in the Ribbon, choose Quick Parts and then click Save Selection to Quick Part Gallery….

 Ribbon with QuickParts highlighted

3. Choose a Name for Your New Quick Part

Choose a name that you want for the Quick Part and press OK.

You’ve just created a Quick Part!

 Create new building block dialog

4. Use Your New Quick Part

Now that you have seen how easy it is to create Quick Parts, let’s look at how it’s even easier to use them. Whenever you want to insert your Quick Part click on the Insert tab in the Ribbon, choose Quick Parts and you will see a gallery with all your saved Quick Parts!

 Quick Part gallery

Clicking on the Quick Part will insert it at the current cursor position.

You can find more advanced options by right-clicking the desired Quick Part.

 Quick Part right-click menu

That’s it! Your favorite replies and reusable content are now at your fingertips!

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

Jed Brown
Outlook Program Manager

Posted: Monday, February 02, 2009 6:02 PM by outblog

Comments

Tim Hare said:

Are there "team" versions of the Gallery that can be used? It would be great to have a shared gallery of parts useful to team members

# February 4, 2009 8:05 AM

Stewart said:

Thanks!

Its small additions like this that you can miss even though you work with a product every day.

# February 4, 2009 10:52 AM

Eunice said:

how do you export quick parts to another computer?

# February 4, 2009 1:37 PM

Noel said:

Is there an easy way to share Quick Parts with other users?

# February 11, 2009 4:02 PM

John Swaringen said:

I've been trying to use Quick Parts in Outlook but it never saves them when I restart the machine.  I read somewhere that you have to run it in Administrator mode, but that doesn't help.

My setup:

Office Pro 2007 SP1

Vista Business 64-bit SP1

Any other suggestions?

# February 13, 2009 9:21 PM

Flavio said:

Wow, but...

1) I created Quick Parts in Word, but I cannot reuse them in Outlook... do I have to input them TWICE?

2) I would like to share the same Quick Parts on several computers/ with several users. How do I do it?

The logical think would be able to customize the directory where the quick box file is to be found (eg a shared directory) - but I can't see how to...

Any suggestion? Thanks!

# February 14, 2009 10:01 AM

Danielle said:

I created several Quick Parts yesterday and today they are missing. Is there a way I can find them or am I doing something to delete them?

# February 17, 2009 9:09 AM

Jerry C. said:

Unfortunitely, I tried to use it and it only works with Word 2007 installed.

# February 18, 2009 9:32 AM

Steven Delit said:

When I close Outlook, and then reopen it, the quick parts do not appear.  How do I save quick parts, so that each time that I reopen Outlook, I can find the parts that I have saved?

Thanks,

Steven

# February 21, 2009 10:21 AM

eJugnoo said:

On lines of what Word team posted for Administering building blocks, can you suggest best practice in a "team" or "large organizational" setup:

http://blogs.msdn.com/microsoft_office_word/archive/2009/02/03/managing-and-administrating-building-blocks.aspx

Requirements:

1. Multiple mail templates, centralized in Network share or SharePoint library.

2. Means of updating all Outlook clients, registry or GP setting, to pick templates.

3. Ability to custom categorize them, so that we can build a simple Ribbon add-in with template preview that points to items within that category.

Sounds familiar? Thanks in advance.

--Sharad

# February 22, 2009 2:35 PM

Angela Small said:

Love this feature, but cannot get the Quick Part to save in my gallery after I log-off my computer.

Is this a one time add-on while you use the feature and then it dissapears when you log-off?

Thank you!

# February 24, 2009 10:38 AM

Frank said:

What about hotkeys? In Outlook 2003, you could assign a hotkey to AutoText entries, which a lot of users at my company found extremely helpful. It doesn't appear to be directly supported anymore so does anyone know another way to do it?

# February 26, 2009 9:14 AM

Frank said:

Figured out the answer to my own question. Once you've saved something to the Quick Parts gallery, just start typing the beginning of a selection, then hit F3 and it will automatically insert the corresponding snippet. Nice.

# February 26, 2009 9:21 AM

Aliehs said:

I have saved information using quick parts in Word 2007.  When I go back the next day or week to use them, they are missing.  What do I need to do to make the quick parts save to my computer so I can use them again and again?

# March 3, 2009 12:40 PM

Jason Samuels said:

Thanks for this, its just what I needed right now to pass along a tutorial to our staff on how to use Quick Parts!

The only thing I'd add (and did for our staff) is that there its even easier using keyboard shortcuts for step 2 (Alt, N, Q, S) and step 4 (type the Quick Part name then F3)

# March 18, 2009 10:39 AM

Jason Samuels said:

Frank, Autotext entries are still supported - they're just harder to find now. Click the Office button, choose Editor Options (or Word Options), choose the Proofing tab and click AutoCorrect Options.

# March 18, 2009 10:43 AM

Lawrence Greenberg said:

How do I edit my quick parts?  I have a colection of these in Outlook that I use for customer service but sometimes I need to edit them.

# March 30, 2009 1:35 PM

Lawrence Greenberg said:

OK, now I am mad but I should have read these post more carefully.  I have the same unanswered problem.  I made a large library of Quick Parts and now it is not available.  Please someone respond.

# March 30, 2009 5:14 PM

Jeannette Yin said:

It doesn't seem to save.  As long as I do not quite Outlook, I can use what I saved.  However, once I quit Outlook and come back in again, whatever I saved has disappeared.  Is there a glitch?

# March 31, 2009 3:25 AM

Jed Brown said:

Quick Parts are saved by Outlook during the shutdown process. It sounds like many of you are running into an issue where Outlook is not completely shutting down and the Quick Parts are not being saved. If you are running any add-ins that may be preventing Outlook from shutting down, I suggest that you install the February CU from here: http://blogs.msdn.com/outlook/archive/2009/02/25/announcing-the-february-cumulative-update-for-outlook-2007.aspx which contains many fixes for a more reliable shutdown. You may also want to disable any add-ins that you think could be causing issues via the Tools | Trust Center | Add-ins Tab | “Go” button.

# April 1, 2009 3:41 PM

Father Fred said:

Running Office Standard 2007 on Vista Home Basic.

I would like to use the calendar to maintain a daily log of activities.  I think the Calendar would serve better than the Journal, though it might not make that much difference from what follows.

So far I’ve created a two-column table with a header row for “Time” and “Item and Activity.”

The table goes in the notes area for a calendar item labeled “Log” in the all-day event field. This entry recurs daily.  

The “Item and Activity” column is a numbered list.

I would like to have the header row repeat from day to day, and possibly on a single day.

The item numbers would be a single series such that if yesterday’s last item was ten, today’s first item would be 11.

Is Quick Parts what I’m looking for?  If not, where can I get help for this project?

# April 6, 2009 2:15 PM

Catrina said:

Quick Parts are fantastic but we ran into the same problem with them not saving after shut-down or logging off.  I read an article on the MS discussion boards that said maybe the template file was corrupt.  In office 2007 you now have normal.dotm(for word) and normalemail.dotm (for Outlook).  If you rename whichever one is causing you the issue; close the program and reboot your machine, open the program again it will build a new file.  Then go in and create your Quick Parts and they should save.  You will have to change and default settings for fonts etc...back to how you had them but this has worked on multiple machines where I work.

# April 8, 2009 4:14 PM

Volz said:

I have a question.  I know that when printing Outlook defaults to a memo style.  How do I edit it that and then change it when printing.  I need to have the e-mail look like a business letter.

Thank you

Charles Volz

# April 10, 2009 4:05 PM

stephanie said:

here's how to share the quickparts among users/computers:

http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/outlook/HA102086531033.aspx#4

# April 16, 2009 4:24 PM

Den DiMarco said:

Hi, Catrina,

The only place I can find NormalEmail.dotm is in a path to which I copies old files from my XP machine. That path is C:\OldFiles\Documents and Settings\Den DiMarco\Application Data\Microsoft\Templates.

Are you sure it's not called somehting else?

Thanks,

Den DiMarco

# April 17, 2009 10:31 PM

Den DiMarco said:

Catrina,

I found NormalEmail.dotm another way. Not sure why the standard search didn't work.

Anyway, I found it interesting that the last modifed date was 3/22/2009 which is about the time it stopped working.

Any idea why it became corrupted? (Power outage, maybe while the file was open?) What's to stop it from becoming corrupted again? <Shudder!>

Anyway, I'll try your suggestion and hope for the best!

Thanks,

Den DiMarco

# April 17, 2009 10:39 PM

Den DiMarco said:

Hi, Catrina,

I tried your sugegstion, but ended up with no NormalEmail.dotm file and Outlook is not creating another one.

Two questions:

1. When you say reboot, do you mean restart or Shut Down first?

2. What did you remane the file NormalEmail.dotm to?

Thanks,

Den DiMarco

# April 17, 2009 11:10 PM

Werner De Vree said:

Hi there!

Just adore QuickParts. Does that mean I´m a rather lazy guy :-)?

How to solve the following;

when I add tables to QuickParts, it does show them in e.g. the meeting request,

however ... : apparently the receiver of the message get´s the information which was put into the table, the table itself is gone! By consequence; everything´s gone scrambled!

Tx for your feedback!

Werner.

# April 25, 2009 3:05 PM
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