How to work with +150 email templates

[mjones68]

Hi, I really hope that someone can help me!



I seem to spend all my day, writing the same emails over and over again, so I’ve tried to create templates for these. I did this by just listing them all in a word document and numbering them. The problem is that the size of the document is just getting silly, as I now have over 150 templates and they are still growing.

I would love to set up some kind of index on the first couple of pages, so for example I would have 10-15 templates under ‘Legal templates’, a similar amount under ‘Recruitment templates’ etc and then I would just have to click on the one I wanted (with some kind of hyperlink) and then I would immediately be taken to the relevant email template.

I just seem to be going around in circles trying to make this work. Has anyone else tried this and can advise on the best solution? I don’t need detailed instructions, just a rough idea of what the feature is in ‘MS Word’ to do this and then I can google it, to get detailed instructions.

Any other tips from someone who’s done this would be very much appreciated ie Is there another solutions such as storing all of the templates in MS Outlook rather than word? I’m certainly open to everyone's advice and ideas!

I’m currently still on XP/Office 2002, but I’m doing a big jump to 8/Office 2013 next week (I’m sure that the change over will be lots of fun and games!!)

Thanks very much,

Michael

[Ulodesk]

It would be helpful to know how you are defining "templates." In Word, this term has a specific meaning, which is not what you are referring to. If you mean, simply, messages; and presuming that none of these is either particularly long or has extensive graphics and formatting, I'm not sure what qualifies as silly with respect to the size of your document. Assuming it's 150 pages or so (and growing), with a short message on each page or continuously entered, that should not be too taxing on Word, unless your computer is as old as your software and has limited CPU, drive, and RAM.
I have not done what you are doing, but I can see three simple ways of approaching this. These apply to Word 2013, though I'm looking at 2010 right now and there might be minor differences.
1. What you have indicated, namely, creating a hyperlinked index (Table of Contents, TOC) at the beginning of the document that links to the "templates" within it, just as a normal TOC would link to headings. The way to do this is to add heading text to your numbers for quick identification, make them all Heading 1 style (look up Styles, if you are not familiar with them), or using Heading one for categories and Heading two for identifiers, and then create the TOC as hyperlinks, which is the default.
2. Make each "template" a separate Word document and place them all in the same folder. Create a separate document, make your list of numbers/headings in normal text, and hyperlink each to its document. Ctrl+click on one and you'll get a pop-up about using an SQL something or other; answer no. Your document will open, you can copy the text, and paste it into your email.
3. Make an Outlook message with each "template", enter the heading in the subject field, and save it. By default, they will be saved in your Drafts folder, but you can create a new folder(s) and move them all to it, if you choose. Then, each will be in Outlook already. When you need one, open it and enter recipients. In Options, change "Save Sent item to" the folder in which you keep these, if it is not the Drafts folder, and send it.

Best,
ULodesk

[mjones68]

Hi Ulodesk,

Thanks very, very much for all of that information. You've given me lots to go on and I'll try out 2 of your suggestions later today.

Thanks again,

Michael

[macropod]

What I'd suggest doing is putting a 'section' heading using Word's 'Heading 1' Style at the top of your ‘Legal templates’ 'section', ‘Recruitment templates’ 'section', etc. Then adding a heading for each of your email 'templates' using Word's 'Heading 2' Style.

You can then simply add an automatic Table of Contents to the start of the document and have all those headings appear there. Plus, if you tell Word to hyperlink the Table of Contents to the entries, simply clicking (or Ctrl-clicking) on any of Table of Contents entry will take you to the relevant 'template' page. If you want to be able to go back & forth with the hyperlinks, you'll also want to add the corresponding buttons to Word's Quick Access Toolbar (QAT).

[mjones68]

Hi Paul,

Thanks for your suggestion, as this sounds a nice simple way of doing things.

Cheers,

Michael