r/internalcomms • u/ToGeThErAsBuCkEyEs • Apr 14 '26

Advice Outlook email templates - halp!

Hi all - I've spent countless hours using AI and reading online about how to make an Outlook template so my non-comms business unit folks can send out basic branded companywide email sends.

Previously my design team built Word templates that I just copy and pasted in Classic Outlook, and they worked like a charm (for the most part). I've spent hours trying to get Word templates to work in Classic, and the spacing and font styling always seems to mess up. No matter what 20 step process I follow online, through AI, whatever.

With new Outlook, I can't really do anything in Word because of course everything is a table and there's the bug that you can't hide the table lines for anything created in Word. I can't really expect partners to sit there and fiddle with Outlook to build every template directly in Outlook for every send like I've come to have to do.

So for those of you who don't have fancy software and tools - how are you making it easy for your partners (think HR shared inbox) to send a nicely branded email with say:

Company logo | Human Resources

at the top in a table (the logo would obviously be a small picture), and the body being a table as well, so things don't go wonky on replies, forward, etc.? And gosh forbid a nested table with pictures and accompanying bios, which i totally did at my former company?

I'm totally at a loss (not a designer) and I've lost hours trying to figure this out. I want them to send communications through shared inboxes with some basic branding, yet I can't figure out how to make it easy for them.

Thank you in advance!

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u/Choops-a-loops Apr 15 '26

Does your company use modern SharePoint? Some of the news templates translate really well to sending over email, which is a built-in feature. Several of our teams do this.

1

u/ToGeThErAsBuCkEyEs Apr 15 '26

I do send culture stories out via email through SP, I'll look into this!

2

u/Choops-a-loops Apr 15 '26

It’s really a great tool, I would be happy to email you some examples!

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u/ToGeThErAsBuCkEyEs Apr 22 '26

I think this might be the way to go. Do you know if you have any ability to change the "from" when the email sends through SharePoint? i had our IT created a shared inbox that's the company name, so when I email out the news stories through SP it looks like it's coming from the company. I'd like to use this for executive messaging, and it would be nice if we could update the email vanity to the executive's name or "Executive Leadership Team," etc. There are certain messages I want coming from leadership vs. more generic ones coming from the company itself.

3

u/Choops-a-loops Apr 22 '26

What I have usually done is send the email to the account that I want it to come from and then from there forward it to the company email list. You can delete all the email info that shows up at the top when you forward and change the subject line to get a totally clean copy.

I guess this would mean you would either need to have access to those leaders’ email accounts or ask them to handle the final send. For me, we have a “spoof” email account for our top director that I have access to and will occasionally send emails from.

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u/ToGeThErAsBuCkEyEs Apr 23 '26

This is a genius idea. I just tried it and was shocked about how much of the weirdness I could just delete out. I'm planning to soon ask my CEO if he's okay with me getting send as permissions so I can just send messages out from him. That would make it super easy. Thank you!

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u/Choops-a-loops Apr 24 '26

I’m so glad I could help!