U2U Email Snippets for Outlook 2007 and SharePoint 2007

Tired of writing and writing similar emails?

Then this "U2U Email Snippets for Outlook 2007" 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 sharepoint list.
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?

The Outlook add-in gets the email snippets from a SharePoint list so first you need to create a special SharePoint 2007 list in order to store your email snippets. This SharePoint list should run on one of your corporate servers. In your company, you can share the list with multiple employees or you can create a private list for each person.

These lists can be created manually or by the configuration panel of the add-in. Creating the lists using add-in gives you the certainty that the list has the required columns.
If you want you can store some initial email snippets into that SharePoint list.

Later on, while writing a new email, you can use the U2U Email Snippets task pane in Outlook 2007 to choose a specific email snippet from the SharePoint list (fig. 1) and insert that snippet in to your mail (fig. 2a and fig. 2b) and now also via drag-drop.

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

Fig 2a: Pressing the "Insert Snippet" button inserts the snippet text into the body of your mail at the position of the cursor.

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

Share your email snippets with your colleagues

As your email snippets are stored in a SharePoint list (Fig. 4), this list is automatically accessible to all your colleagues, if they have the necessary rights of course. Your colleagues can access the email snippets you have written and you can access the ones they have written... a starting point of collaboration.

By clicking (Fig. 3) on the "Edit Snippets List" link at the bottom right corner of the Email snippets task pane, you can view your email snippets.

Fig. 3: You access your Email Snippets SharePoint list by clicking on the "Edit Snippets List".

If you have the necessary user rights, you can view your Email Snippets stored in a dedicated SharePoint 2007 list. Your list can contain both email snippet items and folders. In Fig. 4. you can see for example the folder "Finance" and the email snippet "Dear Mr.".

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

Store your own email snippets

There are two ways to store your email snippets. The easiest way is to use the "Add Snippet"-wizard, a more advanced way is to use the SharePoint list its "New" menu item.

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. 5a); 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. 5b).

Fig. 5a: You can also save part of your email as a snippet: select your text and click "Save as Snippet".

Fig. 5b: 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 SharePoint 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. 7) will popup confirming that the snippet was correctly saved.

Fig. 6: In this dialog you give your snippet a title and you select to what folder in the SharePoint list you want to save it.

Fig. 7: 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 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.

Create new folders and reorganize your own email snippets

Reorganizing your email snippets is simple. Simply create new folders and subfolders (Fig. 10a) and move your snippets by drag and drop (Fig. 10b). It's also possible to remove empty folders (Fig. 10c).