In some situations, you might find it useful to share templates with other users. For example, assume that you’re responsible for managing several people who all submit the same type of report to you on a regular basis through e-mail. In that situation, you might create an e-mail template with the appropriate boilerplate information and your address in the To box and then have the staff use that template to generate the reports. This ensures that everyone is providing comparable information. In addition, whenever you need a different set of data from these employees, you need only modify the template.

When Outlook 2007 is running on Windows Vista, Outlook 2007 stores your template files in the AppDataRoamingMicrosoftTemplates folder of your profile. On a new installation of Windows Vista, this folder would be Users<user>AppDataRoamingMicrosoftTemplates.

With Windows XP, Outlook 2007 stores your template files in the Application DataMicrosoftTemplates folder of your user profile. On a new installation of Microsoft Windows XP, for example, this folder would be Documents And Settings<user>Application Data MicrosoftTemplates, where <user> is your user name. On systems upgraded from Microsoft Windows NT^® Workstation, the folder would be located in WinntProfiles<user>Application DataMicrosoftTemplates.

The easiest way to find the location where Outlook 2007 stores your templates is to save a template or at least go through the motions of saving it. Open a form, click the Microsoft Office Button, click Save As, and then select Outlook Templates. Outlook 2007 displays the path to the folder just above the file name field. (Click the arrow next to Microsoft Templates, or hold the mouse pointer over the Refresh icon to the right to see the path displayed in a ScreenTip.)

Why do you need to know where Outlook 2007 stores your templates? To share a template, you need to share the template file. This means placing the template in a shared network folder, sharing your template folder, or sending the template file to other users (the least desirable option). For any of these options, you need to know the location of the template file you want to share. After you locate the file, you can share the folder that contains it, copy the template to a network share, or forward it to other users as an attachment.