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Is there a stable way of creating an Outlook OFT template, suitable for distributing to users (for them to use), from HTML? We'd like to create an email template for use by a number of people, I'm struggling to figure out how to do this though.

Perhaps the closest I've come is viewing the HTML in IE and choosing Send > Page by email, on a computer with Outlook installed. This opens a new (Outlook) message, which I can save as an OFT file. If I open the OFT file, however, it's plain text.

Is there an alternative way of creating distribute-able Outlook stationery?

Thanks,

Toby

UPDATE One alternative that has occurred to me is distributing the HTML - I'm aware that this can be added to the 'Stationery' folder that Outlook checks in. However, I am trying to find something that is as simple as possible for large numbers of users to setup and an OFT based solution seemed like it would merely require people to double-click the OFT file to create a pre-formatted message.

toby1kenobi
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3 Answers3

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Although it's quite old topic it is still valid and I'd like to add step-by-step in Outlook 2016 (most likely works also in Outlook 2013). I struggled to get a proper guide and after multiple trial and error approaches from different sources, got it finally working.

There's couple of tools/solutions out there but they're paid and usually include plenty of unnecessary stuff while you only need to import HTML template and save it as OFT.

In Outlook 2016:

  1. Click "New Email" (we will add it straight to the place where it should be :) )
  2. Right-Click either on the Quick Access Toolbar in top-left corner or on a free, grey space of the ribbon and choose "Customize Quick Access Toolbar"
  3. In the displayed two-pane window, start with left pane and from dropdown on top of the pane, change "Popular Commands" to "All Commands"
  4. Scroll down left pane until you see two items "Attach File..." and "Attach File" - select second one without three dots/arrow
  5. Between the panes, use "Add >>", to move it to Quick Access Toolbar (right pane) and click OK to close the window

Now every time you open new email, make sure that the "HTML" is set in Format Text tab - then in top left corner (Quick Access Toolbar), you will see the paperclip icon.

  1. Click the icon
  2. Navigate to your HTML template file and select it (single click)
  3. Lookup the Insert button and click on small arrow on its right side
  4. Click Insert as text
  5. Template should load as an HTML (WYSIWYG version)
  6. Save file as an Outlook template (OTF file)

Voila!

Worth considering: Outlook has it's own way of rendering HMTL (it uses MS Word for processing it) and is somehow limited with mix of old HTML and some CSS. I strongly advise to research Litmus articles as these guys have mastered the non-standardised yet, and literally a dark-art of HTML emails in the closest to bulletproof form. Even with current Gmail Client rendering improvements, I still keep inline CSS as a standard to make sure it looks as good in every client out there as possible. There's many tools that convert your HMTL code with styles to the CSS-inlined version so that should be no problem for you guys. Long time will pass before W3C makes standards for HTML emails so good luck until then - hope it helps.

Thielfer
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The most reliable step I've found for Outlook 2007 (and most likely Outlook 2010) is to click New Mail in Outlook (check it's totally empty, and in HTML mode)...

Then click Attach File, choose the HTML file, and at the bottom right click "Insert as Text" <--THE IMPORTANT STEP.

Then click Save As... and choose "OFT" as the format. (Before Save As you can pre-populate the Subject, etc. and it should save it "into" the OFT itself).

Now it appears you can pass around that .oft file and whenever someone double-clicks it everything should appear correctly in Outlook 2007, 2010 and 2013.

SaltySub2
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These instructions also work for Outlook for Microsoft 365 build 2101 but they don't work on Outlook for Mac. Mac OS doesn't seem to recognize OTF files.

Bob Smith
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