Several readers have asked for a fix to an annoyance in Outlook’s handling of AutoText for emails and replies. They’d like to have different AutoText menus for each Outlook account.
Many people have multiple email accounts for different roles in our life. An individual has a personal email account plus, perhaps, another for their role in running a club or hobby. Each of these ‘hats’ could use different AutoText lists – if Microsoft allowed it.
Outlook has a single Word email template for all emails – regardless of account. You can choose a different email signature for each account from Signatures | E-mail Signature
But the Personal Stationery tab on the same dialog has no ‘per account’ options. You’re forced to use the same email template for all messages, regardless of the account.
Note: Outlook has two types of ‘template’.
There’s a message template ‘.oft’ file that you can make from any Outlook email using File | Save As. An .OFT file can contain a pre-populated email with TO, CC and BCC already setup as well as message content. It cannot contain AutoText entries.
Then there’s the Word template NormalEmail.dotm upon which all emails are based. This Word template is used with the message body editor.
There might be a way via VBA to change the AutoText list depending on the email account, but we’re not aware of anything.
