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For sending e-mails to multiple people through MS Outlook (Office 2016), I am using e-mail templates which I store in my file system as .oft files. These can then easily be used for repeating messages or for serial letters. (I use a macro to create new e-mail items based on my templates; but that's not crucial here.)

I experience the following problem:

E-mails created by calling the .oft file miss two things:

  • they miss attachments (that were attached to the original e-mail that was then saved as .oft for later use)

  • they miss pictures that were copy-pasted into the HTML text of the original e-mail. - Picture position and size are preserved as visible from the frames that are still there, but the picture data themselves are gone.

This means that I have to paste the same pictures again into the e-mail (now on screen of Outlook), and I have to re-attach the attachments. Quite annoying!

Question:

a) Is this a bug (on the level of Microsoft) that cannot be tackled

b) Is it a malfunction through wrong setup of the system here in our organisation (that's well possible)

c) Is it a thing I have a chance to solve? How?

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a) Is this a bug (on the level of Microsoft) that cannot be tackled

Tested with Outlook 2016 MSO (16.0.4849.1000). attachments and pictures display correctly in my templates. So, this should not be a bug.

I use a macro to create new e-mail items based on my templates; but that's not crucial here

I’m not sure if this makes any difference. You can try opening the template in this way to see if issue continues:

Home tab > New Items > More Items > Choose Form > User Templates in File System.

Start Outlook in safe mode and see whether this issue continues. This helps eliminate if the problem is related to any third party add-ins. To do this, please exit Outlook, press Win key + R to open the Run command, type outlook /safe, press Enter.

Besides, create a new template in case the original one is corrupted.

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  • These are all good ideas (based on thorrough acquaintance with the system), and I will test them as soon as I am back to office. Will comment on the results then. - Note: My workplace is in a large municipal organisation, and you never know what kind of tampering the IT department did to the system....
    – Christian Geiselmann
    Commented Sep 7, 2019 at 19:10
  • After some testing: Yes, you are right. I can create a healty new e-mail by clicking through New items --> More items --> Choose Form --> User Templates... Same result is with locating the .oft file in the file system and simply double-clicking it. - So the issue is with my macro itself: it has instructions to store the HTMLBody as well as the Subject in variables, but not attachments, and obviously also the picture data get lost that way. - I will publish a separate question on these problems.
    – Christian Geiselmann
    Commented Sep 9, 2019 at 17:21

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