Have you heard of templates in Gmail?

Do you find yourself doing any of the following?

Manually typing out standard responses
Answering the same customer questions every day
Sending similar team/project updates often

I’ve been in customer facing roles for years and have fallen into these traps many times! Here’s how you’re going to save yourself some time from today onwards:

How to use templates in Gmail

Here’s how to enable the feature, create a template, and select it when you need it. It’ll take a couple of minutes to get ready but save you hours!

Enable templates

Go to Gmail Settings (the gear icon)
Click ‘See all settings’
Go to the ‘Advanced’ tab
Set ‘Templates’ to ‘Enable’
Click ‘Save Changes’

Gmail’s Advanced settings tab with Templates set to Enable

Create a template

Compose a new email
Write your template message
Click the three dots at the bottom of the compose window
Select ‘Templates’
Select ‘Save draft as template’
Select ‘Save as new template’
Choose a name for your template (make it memorable)

The Gmail compose window’s three-dot menu with Templates and ‘Save draft as template’ selected

Use a template

Whenever you reply to or write a new email, click the three dots
Select ‘Templates’ and choose the template you want to insert
Edit the email and send when you’re ready

The Templates list in the Gmail compose menu, with a saved template ready to insert

Bonus tip

Find a reply you’ve previously written and copy/paste it into a new message to save it as a template.

Thanks again for subscribing to the Workspace Boost newsletter. I genuinely appreciate it. I’ll see you with the next tip in a week!

Dean