U2U Email Snippets for Outlook 2007/2010

Tired of writing and writing similar emails?

Then this "U2U Email Snippets for Outlook" add-in might be something for you.

What is it?

With this add-in you can save your email message, or a part of the message, as a snippet in a private or public snippet store.
When composing a new email message you can reuse this ready-made snippet by inserting it in your new email message.

If you do not want to read any further but want to immediately download the U2U Email Snippets software? Click here

How does it work?

From the moment you start composing an email, whether you create a new one or you write a reply message, the Outlook add-in will help you by showing your saved snippets in a toolpane on the right-side of your mail message window.

Fig 1a: When writing an email, choose your email snippet and preview its content

Fig 1b: Pressing the "Insert Snippet" button inserts the snippet text into the body of your mail at the position of the cursor.

Fig 2: You can also insert the snippet by using the pop-up menu and clicking "Insert Snippet"

• A SharePoint List
• A SQL Server Database
• The cloud using Windows Azure and Live Mesh
• Your local Outlook data file

Fig 3: Email snippets can be saved locally in Outlook

Getting Started

The way you work with the email snippets is independent from the place that they are stored. This means that you can save the snippets in a SharePoint List and later you can move them to the cloud without affecting the functionality in Outlook 2007.

Maybe it's a good idea to have a look at the different options where you can save your snippets:

• A SharePoint list as snippet store

  When you opt for SharePoint as a snippet store, you need to use a SharePoint list that runs on one of your corporate servers. This list can be shared with your colleagues/employees or can be used as a private list.

• A SQL Server database as snippet store

  As with the SharePoint list, you can share your snippets by storing them in a SQL Server database. This database should run on one of your corporate servers.

• Windows Azure Cloud Services as snippet store

  If you don't have a server with SharePoint or with SQL Server, or you don't want to take care of any server-related stuff, you can opt for Windows Azure Cloud Services, where you save your snippets on the Microsoft servers.
  Live Mesh is used to synchronize the snippets afterwards so that you always have the latest version on your computer. With Live Mesh it is also possible to save the snippets on multiple devices, for example your PC at work and your PC at home, or maybe later even on your mobile phone.

• Local Outlook data file as snippet store

  If you don't want to save your snippets on a server or a shared environment, you can save the snippets locally in Microsoft Outlook.

If you want detailed information how you install and create a snippet store, you can click here.

Share your email snippets with your colleagues

Because your email snippets are stored in a SharePoint list (Fig. 4) , SQL Server database or in the cloud, your snippets are automatically accessible to all your colleagues, if they have the necessary rights of course (not possible when local Outlook data file is used as storage). Your colleagues can access the email snippets you have written and you can access the ones they have written... a starting point of collaboration.

Fig. 4: Snippets are stored in a special SharePoint list.The image shows some sample email
snippets and sample email snippet folders.

When you are using a SharePoint list as snippets store you can also edit them on the SharePoint site. No worries if you didn't remember the URL to your list. By clicking (Fig. 5) on the "Edit Snippets List" you will open the corresponding link in your favorite browser window.

This option is not possible when you are using a SQL Server database or when you stored your snippets in the cloud.

Fig. 5: You access your Email Snippets SharePoint list by clicking on the "Edit Snippets List".

Create new Snippets using the Outlook add-in

There are several ways to create or modify email snippets. You can go to the corresponding snippet store and create snippets from there. A problem arises when you for example use SQL Server as the snippet store, this means that the user needs to have access to the corresponding tables and need to know how to work with SQL, which will not always be the case.

Therefore we've enable the creation or modification of a snippet without going to the store but by using the add-in. This enables anybody to create, delete and update snippets without being a rocket scientist.

Suppose you have written a mail from which you want to save an email snippet. First, in the mail body select the text block you want to save (Fig. 6a); then click on "Save as Snippet" at the bottom left corner of the task pane or right click the folder you want to store your snippet in and click "Add Snippet" (Fig. 6b).

Fig. 6a: You can also save part of your email as a snippet: select your text and click "Save as Snippet".

Fig. 6b: You can also save a snippet by using the context menu of a folder a click "Add Snippet"

By clicking on "Save as Snippet" in the task pane, a dialog "Add Snippet" pops up (Fig. 6) allowing you to save your snippet with a title and in a specific folder.

In the dialog the Snippet Text shows that part of text you selected from your email. Enter the title you want to give to your snippet in the textbox labeled "Snippet Title". Select the folder to which you want to save your snippet to; if you do not select a folder, the root folder of the SharePoint list will be chosen. Notice that the relative path to which your snippet will be saved is shown under the Save To. Click the Save button.

When the snippet is stored a messagebox (fig. 7a) will popup confirming that the snippet was correctly saved.

Fig. 7a: In this dialog you give your snippet a title and you select to what folder in the list you want to save it.

Fig. 7b: Your snippet is saved to your SharePoint list.

Press OK to return to your Outlook email, where your snippet will be listed in the email snippet tree (Fig. 8). In some cases it might be necessary to click the Refresh button in the middle right to see your snippet listed into the snippet tree.

Fig. 8: The email snippet you saved is now available in the email snippet tree.

Update and delete your own email snippets

Snippets can be updated and deleted by using the contextmenu available when right clicking a snippet node in the treeview.
To update a snippet, select the new text and click "Update" on the snippet you want to update (Fig. 9a)
To delete a snippet, simply right click the snippet in the treeview and click "Delete"

Fig. 9a: Updating an email snippet.

Fig. 9b: Deleting an email snippet.

Structure your snippets

The email snippets add-in can handle a lot of snippets. If you don't like to scroll through snippets, you can use folders, just as you would do on your local drives.

Folders give you two advantages:

1. A good overview and structure of your snippets
2. You can use folders to hide private or personal snippets ( At this moment, this is only for SharePoint )

Fig. 10: Use folders to structure your snippets.

Fig. 11a: Create new folders.

Reorganize your own email snippets

Reorganizing your email snippets is simple. Simply create new folders and subfolders (Fig. 11a) and move your snippets by drag and drop (Fig. 11b). It's also possible to remove empty folders (Fig. 11c).

Fig. 11b: Drag-Drop snippets to other.

Fig. 11c: Deleting folders.

Searching in email snippets

Even with a good structure it is sometimes hard to find your snippets back again, for example when you forgot the title of the snippet, or you don't know in which folder you've saved your snippet.

To handle these situations we've added a great search. This search is not only very fast, it looks everywhere in the snippet, from the title to the body of the snippet (fig 11).

Fig. 12: Searching in the snippets.

Downloading and Installing the U2U Email Snippet software

Find the download and setup instructions here.