Template shortcuts broken? (2002, SP2)

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I used to be able to create a template for frequently used messages and save a shortcut to it on the taskbar. Since installing SP2 this appears to have broken. Now when I click on the shortcut, instead of creating a new message based on the template. it creates a new blank message and adds the template as an attachment. This is bizarre and extremely annoying. I now have to do the ‘File>New>Choose F’orm>Look In>User templates in file system’ routine, five steps where one worked before. Does anyone know anything about this?

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I’m on OLXP, SP2. I just tried this and it works fine (Great idea, btw!). I saved an item as .msg, then dragged it to the Outlook bar.

Are your templates saved in .msg format? How do you create the shortcut?

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That doesn’t work. If you save the message as an .msg file, whatever you compose will be saved and next time you open it to compose a new message, it will have all the text you added when you accessed it last time. A template has what you need for everything you want to include when you compose a message with it, and nothing else. Just like a Word template. Outlook templates are saved as .oft files.

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Well, I amended the msg and sent it, then went back into it via the shortcut. The original version, not the amended one, came up. (Perhaps it’s the auto-save that’s causing what you see. I didn’t wait long enough for that to kick in.) For what it’s worth I just created an oft and dragged it to the Outloook bar, creating a shortcut. It comes up normally. I’m using the Outlook bar to establish a baseline behavior. I used your technique of dragging a shortcut to each type of item to the task bar. These work fine too. My base message type is rtf and I do NOT use word as the editor.

I know none of this help you much. It just tells us that it’s not OLXP or SP2 per se. I couldn’t find a setting in Tools | Options to control this. Maybe someone else can help…

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Yes, it’s the autosave function (or saving it manually) that does it. Try it.

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