Email templates

Question

My email templates saved have all disappeared. How do we find them?

Also I went to my old signatures where I had some saved. I am not able to even add a new one or edit an old.

How do we fix this?

Answer 1

Hi Mastrogiovanni, Shawn (Jacksonville, FL)

Thank you for reaching out to Microsoft Q&A

About your templates issue, this behavior can sometimes occur under certain conditions related to server-side synchronization. After researching this behavior, we found that it aligns with an active service incident under the reference code EX1238375. This specific service behavior currently affects users attempting to access the "My Templates" and "Viva Insights" add-ins across multiple platforms, including the Outlook desktop application, Outlook mobile, and Outlook on the web. It seems the automated system may require a little bit of time to process these requests as the service is being restored. Please refer the following article:

My Templates are missing from Outlook

Please try to reach out to your organization's IT Administrator and ask them to submit a formal support ticket through the Microsoft 365 Admin Center.

In this context about your signature, you can try 2 options below to see if it can help you:

Option 1: Use Outlook’s built-in email template capability

Because the My Templates add-in is impacted, the practical workaround is to use Outlook’s built-in email template capability instead of the add-in:

• In classic Outlook for Windows, open a template by using New Items > More Items > Choose Form, then select User Templates in File System (default path is c:\users\username\appdata\roaming\microsoft\templates).
• If your organization has disabled add-ins, Microsoft notes that “My Templates” may not appear for that reason as well, and in that case your administrator would need to review add-in availability.

This approach keeps you productive even if the add-in itself is not currently loading due to the ongoing incident.

Option 2: Restore ability to create/edit signatures

Use Microsoft’s supported signature configuration path for your Outlook version:

• Microsoft provides step-by-step guidance to add/edit signatures across new Outlook, classic Outlook, and Outlook on the web. If signature editing is expected to be available, following that configuration path is the standard method.

If the Signatures option is missing or blocked in settings, the available evidence indicates this can occur when the organization manages signatures centrally (policy or signature management solution). In that scenario, the workable path is to have the tenant/admin confirm whether signatures are centrally managed and whether end-user editing is allowed.

Hope my answer will help you.

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Answer 2

In classic Outlook for Windows, email templates and signatures can disappear if the My Templates add-in is unavailable or if add-ins are disabled at the organization level.

To check and restore My Templates in classic Outlook:

1. Open Outlook and select New Email.
2. On the Message tab, look for View Templates (My Templates add-in).
   • If View Templates is present, select it to open the My Templates task pane and verify whether the templates are still there.
   • If View Templates is missing, the My Templates add-in may be disabled or affected by a service issue.

If My Templates is missing entirely:

1. From the ribbon in a new message, select All Apps (or More Apps).
2. Try to locate My Templates under All Apps > Add Apps.
   • If it does not appear, or adding it gives a “Something went wrong” error, this matches a known service incident where users cannot access the My Templates add-in and other add-ins (such as Viva Insights or Salesforce).
   • In this case, the issue is on the service side (incident MO1243496 / EX1238375). The fix is being deployed by Microsoft and errors should reduce as the deployment completes. No local client change will permanently fix it until the service-side deployment is finished.

If an admin is available and needs to verify the add-in status in Exchange Online:

1. Connect to Exchange Online PowerShell as a tenant administrator. See Connect to Exchange Online PowerShell.
2. Run:
   • get-app -Identity a216ceed-7791-4635-a752-5a4ac0a5eb93 to see the status of the My Templates add-in.
   • If needed, enable it with: Set-App -Identity a216ceed-7791-4635-a752-5a4ac0a5eb93 -OrganizationApp -Enabled $true
   • Then run get-app to confirm the add-in status.

If My Templates is not listed at all in Outlook and the add-in is disabled at the organization level, templates created with the My Templates add-in will not be accessible until the add-in is re-enabled.

Regarding signatures that cannot be added or edited: the provided context does not include specific troubleshooting steps for signature editing issues. However, if signatures were being used as a workaround to store template text, and the My Templates/add-ins infrastructure is currently impacted by the same service incident, signature-related template usage may also be indirectly affected until the service-side fix is fully deployed.

If the problem persists after the service incident is reported as resolved, an admin should:

• Confirm that add-ins are not turned off for the organization, because if My Templates is not listed, the organization may have add-ins disabled.
• If requested by Microsoft Support, collect a performance trace or HAR trace as described in Collect a Performance Trace in new Outlook for Windows while reproducing the missing My Templates/add-ins behavior.

For now, recovery of the missing templates depends on restoring access to the My Templates add-in (or confirming it is enabled and not blocked by the ongoing service incident). Once the add-in is visible again, templates saved to the primary mailbox should reappear in the My Templates task pane.

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References:

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