Five email templates built from your sent folder, saved and ready to insert

Most of us have a handful of emails we could write in our sleep: the confirmation, the request for a missing document, the polite no, the status reply, the payment reminder. They still take longer than they should, because each one starts from a blank screen or an old message and ends with a hunt for the name you forgot to change.

The best versions of those emails already sit in your Sent folder. You’ll give two or three past versions of each to an AI assistant, let it find the skeleton they share, and save the result as a template in Gmail or Outlook. Then the assistant steps aside: inserting a saved template takes a few clicks, which beats any prompt. By the end of this you’ll have five templates saved and one already used on a real email, timed, so your own stopwatch tells you what it gives back.

What you’ll be able to do

• Insert any of your five saved templates in Gmail or Outlook in a few clicks, each written in your own words, with every detail that changes from one email to the next marked as a [BLANK IN CAPITALS].
• Catch a forgotten blank before the email goes out, and know how long one of those emails takes with and without its template, because you measured it.

What you need

• About an hour, and your Sent folder.
• Gmail on a computer, or Outlook: new Outlook for Windows, Outlook on the web or classic Outlook. With another email app, keep the finished templates in a document and copy from there.
• A chat assistant such as Claude, ChatGPT, Gemini or Copilot. A free account is enough.
• A timer. The one on your phone will do.

Before you paste an old email into the assistant, replace names, amounts, account numbers and anything else that points to a person with placeholders such as [NAME]. Before you upload a client document covers what to check about the tool itself.

Steps

1. Find your five. If you’ve worked through How to find your most repetitive work, your list already names them. Otherwise, search your Sent folder for phrases you type again and again: “we have received your request” at a support desk, “thank you for your interest” in HR, “following up” in sales, “invoice” in finance and admin, “your appointment” at a front desk. In Gmail, from:me "following up" newer_than:6m lists what you sent with that phrase in the last six months; in Outlook, search in Sent Items. Pick five kinds of email you sent at least three times. For example, an office manager might end up with an appointment confirmation, a request for missing forms, a polite refusal, a status update and an invoice reminder.
2. Time your baseline. Pick one of the five and write it into a blank draft the way you usually do (if you usually copy an old one and edit it, do that), with the timer running. Don’t send it. Write down the minutes, and how many times you sent that email last month.
3. Gather two or three past versions of each, written to different people so the differences show. Replace every specific with a placeholder in capitals: [NAME], [DATE], [AMOUNT], [DOCUMENT]. If one version is already the email you’d send every time, skip the assistant for that one: put blanks where the specifics were and go to step 6.
4. Paste the prompt. Start a new conversation, paste the prompt from “What to copy” below, fill in the purpose and add your versions underneath. For the next email you can stay in the same conversation: write “Same rules, new purpose: [PURPOSE]” and paste its versions.
5. Check what came back. The answer ends with a list of the blanks and of every word the assistant changed or added. Delete any promise, deadline or policy you didn’t write. Then turn into blanks any detail that came back as fixed text but will change next time, such as a date that happened to match in all your versions. An assistant is good at spotting what your emails share; it can’t know which detail will be different next week.
6. Make it sound like you. Add a blank for one line you write fresh each time, such as [PERSONAL LINE: one sentence about their situation], and your usual sign-off. Leave out your signature if your email app adds it automatically, or it may appear twice.
7. Save the version you’ll send most, or both if you use both, with the clicks under “Where to save them”.
8. Name them the same way, following the scheme in “What to copy”, so they sit together in the list and you can pick the right one without opening it.
9. Use one today and time it. When one of these emails is due, insert the template, fill in the blanks, run the check before you send, and time the whole thing. If none comes up today, time a practice run in a draft to your own address. Multiply the difference from your baseline by last month’s count: that’s what this template gives back each month, by your own stopwatch.

What to copy

The prompt for step 4:

Below are [2 or 3] emails I sent for the same purpose: [PURPOSE, for example "asking a new hire for missing documents"]. Names, amounts and other details are already replaced with placeholders in square brackets.

Make one reusable template from them.
- Keep my wording. Use my sentences and phrases. Add words only to join two parts, and don't make the tone more formal or more cheerful.
- Wherever my emails differ in a detail that will change each time (a name, date, amount, document, link), put a blank in square brackets and capitals, like [FIRST NAME] or [DUE DATE].
- Add no promises, deadlines, prices or policies that aren't in my emails.
- Mark any sentence that appears in only one of my emails as [OPTIONAL].
- Give me two versions, each with a subject line: a short one under 80 words, and a full one.
- After the templates, list every blank you used and every place where you changed or added words.

Email 1:
[PASTE]

Email 2:
[PASTE]

Email 3:
[PASTE]

For example, a short version for a made-up HR team could read:

Subject: One document still missing for your start on [START DATE]

Hi [FIRST NAME],

Thank you for sending your paperwork so quickly. We still need [DOCUMENT] to finish your file. Could you reply with it attached by [DUE DATE]?

[PERSONAL LINE]

Best regards,

The naming scheme for step 8: what the email does, the situation, the version, and the month you last checked its facts.

Confirm: appointment, short (2026-10)
Request: missing documents, full (2026-10)
Decline: request we can't take on, short (2026-10)
Remind: invoice overdue, short (2026-10)

The check before you send:

1. Search the draft for [ . Every match is a blank you haven't filled.
2. Check the subject line and the recipient.
3. Change the first or last sentence for this person.
4. Check every date, price, address and link against today's facts.

In Gmail, your browser’s find (Ctrl+F, or Cmd+F on a Mac) searches an open draft too. Elsewhere, use your email app’s find command.

Where to save them (checked October 2026)

Gmail

Templates work in Gmail on a computer. Google says they aren’t available in the Gmail mobile apps, so keep the short versions in a note on your phone.

1. Turn them on once: Settings, See all settings, Advanced, Enable next to Templates, then Save Changes.
2. Click Compose, paste the template with its subject line as the first line of the text, and leave the To field empty. Gmail fills an empty subject line with the template’s name, so the real subject has to travel in the text.
3. At the bottom of the compose window, click More options, Templates, Save draft as template, Save as new template, and give it the name from your scheme.
4. To use it: Compose, More options, Templates, then pick it under Insert template, and replace the template’s name in the subject field with the subject from the first line, then delete that line. To update one, edit it in a draft and choose its name under Save draft as template, Overwrite Template, then Save.

New Outlook for Windows and Outlook on the web

1. Choose Home, New, Mail, and paste the template. Leave the To field empty, because a mail template keeps recipients along with the subject, formatting and attachments.
2. On the Message ribbon, choose Mail template, Save email as template, type the name and select Save.
3. To use it: Home, New, Mail from template, and pick it from the list. Changes you make in that email don’t touch the saved template.

Each mail template is saved to the account you wrote it from, so with several accounts, save it in the one you send from. Microsoft says mail templates need a qualifying Microsoft 365 subscription; if Mail template isn’t on your Message ribbon, keep the templates in a document.

Classic Outlook

Choose New Email, paste the template, then File, Save As, with Outlook Template as the file type. To use it: New Items, More Items, Choose Form, then User Templates in File System under Look In.

What can go wrong and how to check

It reads like a form letter

People notice when every message from you is identical; the [PERSONAL LINE] blank and step 3 of the check are there for that. If someone is upset or the situation is unusual, close the template and write the reply yourself.

A blank goes out unfilled

“Dear [FIRST NAME]” in a customer’s inbox is the classic. Capitals in square brackets stand out on a quick read, and the search for [ catches what a quick read misses, as long as you run it every time.

The facts go stale

Prices, office hours, links and the name of whoever handles something all change, and a template keeps repeating the old version, politely, for years. The month in each name tells you when you last checked. When a fact changes, update every template that mentions it that same day.

Where to go next

Templates handle the replies that come out the same every time. For the ones that never do, A one-page style card for replies that are different every time gives the assistant your voice and your facts, so its first draft needs less fixing. If the same question lands every week, An FAQ page built from the questions you answer every week answers it before anyone writes in. And keep today’s prompt with your other good prompts, so template number six starts from a prompt you already trust.