Reuse text blurbs in Outlook

A couple of times I've seen newsgroup or other forum posts from people asking if they can reuse some oft-repeated piece of text in Outlook. They come up with some odd way of reaching their goal, usually by trying some VBA and hooking the ActiveInspector to try and insert something. But there's a much easier way, with no code required.

Outlook 2003 method


In Outlook 2003, use Signatures to store and insert stock messages easily.

Go to Tools » Options » Mail Format tab, and click the Signatures button at the bottom of the dialog:

Click New and enter the name of the new signature. Name it so you'll recognize what the signature contains just by looking at the name.

When you insert a signature, it gets added to the bottom of an existing email, so I usually write whole messages in the signature. That way, the "signature" is the whole message and it doesn't matter that it's pasted at the "bottom".

Outlook 2007 method


Outlook 2007 has a feature called Quick Parts. To read more about Quick parts, read the Lifehacker article at Save Time and Typing with Outlook 2007's Quick Parts or at the Microsoft Outlook team blog. I assume this feature will remain in Outlook 2010 and will continue to function the same way.

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About JP

I'm just an average guy who writes VBA code for a living. This is my personal blog. Excel and Outlook are my thing, with a sprinkle of Access and Word here and there. Follow this space to learn more about VBA. Keep Reading »

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comment bubble Comments:

  1. Matt writes:

    Outlook 2003 method will muck up your spell checker – spell check usually omits the signature. Probably a better way would be to use the AutoCorrect function and come up with trigger "codes" which would then get replaced with the code with the blurb.

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