Outlook — creating OFT files for email newsletters
February 12th, 2008OFT files are Outlook Templates, also sometimes called Outlook File Templates. You can make email templates from them, but as with most Microsoft products the quality can be quite flaky if you are not careful. I have had to create many OFT files for clients and if you go back in time and code to 1996 web standards you can get them to look pretty decent.
There’s too ways to create OFT files. One is to save the email from the Save As menu and select OFT under the Save as type: drop down. This means you already have the email in your inbox, which means mailing the html with a 3rd party program.
There’s an easier way to do this which will allow you to skip the step of sending yourself the email. The OFT process could even be handed off to the business people that need the OFT.
Top menu go to,
View / Toolbars / Web.
You should now have an input field at the top that says something like outlook:Inbox
Here you can type / paste any web address and it will load the page in Outlook. Once this is done, in the menu go to,
Actions / Send Web Page by E-mail
Now you will see the page in a new mail window. If the webpage was not to complex and created using tables, it should look okay. Pure css and more complex designs will not work at all and really shouldn’t even be considered for any email deployments. I’m a strong supporter of web standards, unfortunately some major email platforms are not.
The next step is to save the email as an OFT. Go to,
Giant windows bubble (AKA Office Button) / Save As
Select OFT, name the file and save.
You should now have an OFT file. You can test this by double clicking it which will open Outlook. You can now edit the text and send to other people. OFT files can be a cheap internal alternative to full blown email deployments. I would only recommend OFT files for small internal newsletters. OFT’s may not work properly on other email clients and are proprietary.
Responses
20 Comments to “ Outlook — creating OFT files for email newsletters ”
You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.Every time I learn how easy it is to do things like this, I get so mad that it takes my marketing dept so long to do something so simple.
thanks for this
Dont know if you can help, but i have set up.oft templates on various workstations and on one machine in particular instead of loading the template into an e mail message window it actually attaches to the message instead as an attachment. cant seem to find out why. Any ideas would be much appreciated
alek vuckovic
Hi Alek, that’s odd, if it has an oft extension just double clicking it should automatically load it into the client. Was the oft file made in the same version of Outlook that it’s being used with. Outlook 2007 uses word as it’s render engine. Sorry I can’t be of more help.
Hi Brian,
As an employee of a marketing department and a graphic designer, I will say that Microsoft programs are not on our big list of things to design for. In fact, designing in microsoft is extremely frustrating for us creative folk. Give us a break eh – we have to learn how to use the limiting software before we can create wonderful things.
I think MS damages their reputation more by trying so hard to get people to use their proprietary specs. The Internet is open and massive, and it always will be. They are never going to own the Internet space like they once did the desktop market space.
Alex,
Have you checked on your machine to see that the default mail format is HTML and not plain text? That might explain why your OFT file loads as an attachment instead.
I’ve attempted to use outlook express with your above instructions, but no luck. Is it possible to create an OFT from HTML with Outlook Express?
Hi Mona, these directions are specific for Outlook, not Outlook express. There is a way however to turn on an HTML view in Outlook Express and then you can paste your HTML directly into Outlook Express. I used this method years ago and cannot remember the exact steps. If you are sending HTML directly you may want to try something like MaxBulk Mailer. I use this at work for testing all our email campaigns.
If you are set on using Outlook Express try searching Outlook Express HTML view. Hope this helps.
This was a great help, but now client wants images embedded. Can embed normal images by clicking on them and re linking. But can’t select background image to do this. Tried a couple experiments, but none of them work. Any idea how to do this?
Hi Mike, I don’t think you can do this in outlook, especially outlook 2007 and up since it uses MS word as its HTML rendering engine. This means no background images even declared in CSS or HTML.
I also wouldn’t recommend embedding anyway since you may not have predictable rendering in all email clients. If Outlook is your only concern then this may not be an issue though.
Thanks for the reply! I completely agree with not embedding images, and tried to talk the client into it. Well, I’m subcontracted for this, so I’m even more removed unfortunately. I’m going to say no background images in the design if they want them embedded. Thanks again!
I first created an HTML for my newsletter…it contains simple anchor links…so the reader can go back up to the top of the page…etc. Some reason Outlook converts the anchor links into full path to the webserver I placed the HTML into…so it launches a browser page when I save it out as an OFT file. Is there any coding tricks or Outlook setting I should set so that it won’t take my anchor links and convert them?????!!!!
Thanks!
Hi Mary, I’m not sure why it’s converting them, I’m not sure why Outlook does half the things it does, but anchor jump links have always been a little flaky with email. I usually recommend against them as I have seen them do weird things in some web mail clients too. If you really must have them then it might be a good opportunity to jump the users to the landing page equivalent. Once you have your users on a web page you obviously have much more flexibility.
Hi, Ian. Thanks for your site. I’m unable to save an email as an .oft file. I’m trying to create a template for an “out of office” reply to be generated automatically. I have Outlook 2003. Is this version too old to be able to do this?
Hi Anne, I’m pretty sure you can do an OFT with Outlook 2003, but I haven’t played with Outlook for awhile, so I’m not sure how you do it, but I believe it’s very similar.
You responded pretty quickly, which I really appreciate, but I actually continued to do some research on this issue after I left the message on your blog and I found the answer, and it worked!
Link: file:///C:/Users/Act%20and%20Office/Documents/Create%20email%20Template/HA010917681033.aspx.htm
Even though that link tells you how to make email templates for sales letters, I was able to follow the directions to make an “out of office” template.
Thanks!
Glad you figured it out. Microsoft software can be a beast sometimes.
I created a html page.. which I then inserted into a new message and then saved it as a OFT..
How can I set it up so I can use the template whenever I want?
i can’t find outlook templates in save as type ????????? in outlook 2003
Osama, should be the same as 2007, but maybe it’s under export or something. I don’t have a copy of 2003 so I can’t check, but I do know 2003 has OFT support.