my Outlook templates button keeps disappearing for no reason.

Question

I have several work templates created and twice in two days, the template button disappears. I follow instruction such as looking in view tab, going to options to see if I need to add it from there and there is no template option to add This is so frustrating as I can't work productively responding to dozens of emails daily in a support role.

Answer 1

Dear @Gabrielle Harris,

Thank you for reaching out regarding the missing My Templates option in Outlook. From my research, your situation appears to be similar to an issue that some other users have recently reported. Microsoft is currently investigating this behavior in certain environments

For reference, please review the answer and link provided by Q&A Assist above. At this time, there is unfortunately no client‑side workaround to manually re‑enable the feature while the incident is active. Once Microsoft’s fix has finished deploying, the add‑in should automatically reappear without requiring any changes on your device

For issues of this nature, I recommend that the Global Administrator in your organization create a service request with Microsoft Support to help prioritize a fix for your tenant. For detailed instructions, please see: Get support - Microsoft 365 admin. If you don't know who your IT administrator is, please refer to this article: How do I find my Microsoft 365 admin? - Microsoft Support 

If Microsoft releases a confirmed fix or update, I’ll be happy to share it here. Please let me know if you need anything else. Thank you for your patience and understanding, and I wish you a wonderful day ahead

Answer 2

The disappearing Templates button in classic Outlook is a known service issue with the My Templates add‑in, not something misconfigured on the device.

Current information from service incidents (EX1238375 and MO1243496) shows:

• The View Templates / My Templates add‑in can suddenly be missing from the ribbon and from All Apps / More Apps.
• Trying to add it back often gives a “Something went wrong” error, or it can’t be found under All apps > Add apps.
• Other add-ins like Viva Insights or Salesforce may also disappear at the same time.
• Root cause is recent backend changes to authentication and add‑in deployment in Exchange Online; Microsoft is actively deploying fixes and monitoring telemetry to reduce add‑in errors.

Because this is a backend service problem, there is no reliable client‑side setting that will permanently stop the button from disappearing. The long‑term fix depends on Microsoft’s service deployment completing for the tenant.

In the meantime, for an organization/tenant admin, the supported checks are:

1. Verify the My Templates add‑in status in Exchange Online PowerShell
   1. Connect to Exchange Online PowerShell. See: Connect to Exchange Online PowerShell.
   2. (Optional for support) Start a transcript to capture output:

            Start-Transcript -Path "C:\mytemplates\MySession.txt" -Append
      

   3. Check the add‑in status:

            get-app -Identity a216ceed-7791-4635-a752-5a4ac0a5eb93
      

   4. Ensure it is enabled at the organization level:

            Set-App -Identity a216ceed-7791-4635-a752-5a4ac0a5eb93 -OrganizationApp -Enabled $true
      

   5. List all add‑ins to confirm:

            get-app
      

2. If the issue persists after confirming it is enabled, open a support case so Microsoft can correlate with the ongoing incident (MO1243496 / EX1238375) and check tenant‑specific backend logs. Support may request a HAR/performance trace from new Outlook to capture the failure when searching for “My Template” under More Apps > Add Apps.

For daily work, there is no documented permanent workaround in classic Outlook beyond waiting for the service fix and ensuring the add‑in remains enabled at the tenant level. If available in the environment, consider temporarily using Outlook on the web or new Outlook, where the same mailbox‑stored templates can be accessed once the add‑in is functioning again.

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References:

• My Templates are missing from Outlook
• Create an email message template