Gmail Templates “Canned Responses”

If you regularly produce emails with similar content and want to avoid repetitive typing,  you could (old method) keep a library of texts in NotePad (or a similar plain text editor) and use “cut and paste”.

Gmail Labs recently came up with this alternative “experimental” method which is rather good.  Rather than “Templates” they chose to call them “Canned responses” – don’t you just love American computer speak…..

The first essential step is to Enable Canned Responses:

1. Start Gmail and log in to your account.
2. Click the gear icon at the top right corner of the screen and then click “Settings” from the drop-down list.
3. Click the “Labs” tab from the “Settings” screen.
4. Scroll down to “Canned Responses” and click the radio button next to “Enable.”
5. Click “Save Changes” at the bottom of the page.
6. Re-start Gmail to ensure that the changes take effect.

Create a new template (ok… “Canned Response”):

1. Start Gmail and log in to your account.
2. Click “Compose”  to start a new email.
3. Compose a new message in Gmail that you want to use as a template.   Leave the signature in place if you want it to appear in messages sent using this template.  You can leave both the Subject: and To: fields empty,  they are not saved along with the template.
4. Click the More options downward-pointing triangle in the toolbar at the bottom of the message, next to the Discard draft button.
5. From that new menu, choose Canned responses and then New canned response…
6. In the window that pops open, type a name for your template. This name will also be used as the subject line of the new message (you can edit the subject later).
7. Click OK to save the  new template.

Create a New Message Using a Template:

1. Start a new message or reply.
2. Click the More options button from the bottom right side of the message’s formatting toolbar (it’s the one that looks like a down triangle – you should know that by now).
3. Choose Canned responses from that menu.
4. Select the desired template under the Insert area to immediately import that template into the message.
5. Make sure you fill the To: and Subject: fields appropriately.
6. Edit the message as needed and click Send as usual.

Note that Gmail will not overwrite any existing text except if you highlight it before inserting the template’s text. For example, you could type something manually and then insert a templated message to have it included after your custom text.

Edit a Message Template:

1. Start with a new blank message. It’s best to make sure the entire message area is empty so that you can edit only the canned response.
2. Click the More options button in the message’s toolbar (yes, the tiny down arrow at the bottom right).
3. Click Canned responses.
4. Choose the template you want to change, from the Insert section, so that it will be imported into the message.
5. Make the desired changes to the template.
6. Go back to the More options and Canned responses section.
7. Select the same template as before, but under Save section so that it will be saved over the existing template.
8. Click OK when you see the Confirm overwrite canned response prompt that reads This will overwrite your saved canned response. Are you sure you want to proceed?. – Yes.

Delete a Message Template: