Microsoft Outlook 2007 has a little known feature called Quick Parts, which can improve efficiency for some users. Quick Parts are customizable, reusable snippets of text, images, charts etc.  Sort of like inserting content from your computer, but much more versatile.

For one thing, the Quick Part content is part of Outlook and is stored in a template. No need to search for it. Secondly, it can be saved and distributed as a template for Outlook.

PARTS TO PICK

To create a Quick Part, open an email message and create whatever content you want to reuse. For example, you could create paragraphs of text and then pick and choose them to compose email messages that are consistent yet tailor made for your recipient.  Or you can insert tables, charts, images, etc.  You can even combine as many different elements as you want.

Once you’re done, select everything you want in the Quick Part then click the Insert tab on the Outlook Ribbon, and select Quick Parts.   At the bottom of the Quick Parts option, click Save Selection to Quick Parts Gallery. The option won’t be available if nothing is highlighted in the message body.

In the Create new Building Block window that opens, there are several options to choose from that allow you to identify and reuse the content.

Name:  For the name of the Quick part, Outlook will assume the first few words of the text if you don’t enter your own.

Gallery: This field has preset galleries you can add your part to. They include Bibliographies, Cover Pages, Headers, Footers, Watermarks, and many more, but you don’t have most of those readily available to insert in Outlook, it seems best to leave it set to Quick Parts. For instance if you chose the Text Box Gallery, it would then be found under the Text Box button on the ribbon.  But there isn’t any easy option to insert a Footer into an email message.  Leaving it set to Quick Parts means they will all be found in the same place.

Categories: This is not the same thing as Categories elsewhere in Outlook. These are specifically for Quick Part organization within a Gallery.

Description: This field is self-explanatory and is shown when you mouse over a Quick Part in the drop-down list.

Save In:  This allows you to choose which loaded template you want to store the Quick Part in. Since NormalEmail.dotm template is the standard template for Outlook 2007 email composition, you’ll probably want to leave that as is unless you have other templates you’ve created that you would rather use.

Options: There are three options for presenting the Quick Part when it’s selected for an email message: Insert content only, Insert content in its own paragraph, and Insert content in its own page. The first will insert the content exactly where your cursor happens to be.  The second will create a new paragraph, even if your cursor is in the middle of an existing paragraph. The third option doesn’t really apply in Outlook, but if you were using this in Word, for instance, it would create a new page to insert the quick part into.

Now, click OK to save your Quick Part.

PICKING PARTS

Applying a Quick Part to an email message is as simple as selecting Insert, Quick Parts and clicking the one you want to add. The content will then appear in the message body at the cursor location. The Insert ribbon options are not available unless the cursor resides somewhere in the message body.

Using Quick Parts can make the email writing part of your day go by so quickly, you’ll probably have time for that extra coffee break you really need.

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