Microsoft lists Quick Parts as available in new Outlook as of April 2026. Check the Insert tab of a new message. If it is missing, update Outlook and use My Templates while you wait for the feature to reach your build. Three differences from classic Outlook still matter.
Where to look first
- Quick Parts — Insert tab of a message window, if your build has it.
- My Templates — Insert tab, an icon like a document with a small lightning bolt. This is what Microsoft pointed people at while Quick Parts was gone, and it still works.
- Classic Outlook — if you can still switch back with the toggle at the top right, your Quick Parts are all there.
The three gaps
Review these gaps before rebuilding a library in the new Outlook.
| Classic Outlook | New Outlook | |
|---|---|---|
| Reusable blocks in a message | Quick Parts | Quick Parts, and My Templates |
| In calendar items | Yes | No |
| Brings your existing blocks across | — | No automatic migration |
| Keyboard shortcut to insert | Type the name, press F3 | No equivalent |
| Images and tables inside a block | Yes | My Templates is capped at about 34 KB per template, so text only |
The migration gap comes from the different storage systems. Classic Outlook keeps Quick Parts inside a Word template file on your PC, NormalEmail.dotm; the new Outlook keeps its blocks in your mailbox. There is no supported tool that moves one to the other, so a library built over years has to be retyped or pasted across one item at a time.
Getting your blocks out of classic Outlook before you lose access
If your organisation is moving everyone to the new Outlook, do this while the old one still opens. It takes a few minutes and the alternative is remembering what was in there.
- 1. Open classic Outlook and start a new message.
- 2. Insert tab → Quick Parts. Hover each entry to see it, or insert them all into one draft message.
- 3. Send that draft to yourself, or save it. Now the text exists somewhere that survives the switch.
- 4. Rebuild from it in whichever tool you land on.
Why this keeps happening
Quick Parts, My Templates, Gmail’s templates, Word’s AutoText and their signature boxes implement the same idea separately. Each feature lives inside one application, keeps its own storage, and becomes unavailable when you switch programs or when the vendor rewrites that program.
The repeated cost is not learning a new menu. It is that the text you reuse most is scattered across whichever tools happened to have the feature, so you copy between them, or you keep a scratch document open, or you retype.
The version that does not live inside one app
Text Replacements puts the same blocks in Windows. You define a short trigger such as ;sig, ;addr, ;ooo — and it expands into the full text the moment you press Space, Enter or Tab, in whichever application the caret is in. Classic Outlook, new Outlook, the calendar item Quick Parts does not reach, Gmail in a browser, Slack, Word, a terminal: it does not know or care which one it is typing into.
Snippets are stored locally. You can import an existing set from JSON or CSV and export it again, providing the migration option Outlook lacks. Nothing is sent anywhere, password fields are blocked automatically, and the product is a one-time purchase rather than a subscription.
What it does not do is formatting. Quick Parts can hold a table, an image or styled text; a text expander inserts text. If your blocks are formatted layouts rather than words, Quick Parts is the right tool and this is not a replacement for it — the difference between the two kinds of reuse is worth being clear about before you switch.
Sources
Frequently asked questions
Are Quick Parts available in the new Outlook?
Where did my existing Quick Parts go?
NormalEmail.dotm on your PC. The new Outlook keeps its blocks in the mailbox instead and does not import them, so nothing was deleted — it is simply not looking in the same place.