Backup or Transfer Microsoft Office 2007 Quick Parts Between Computers

After reading an article I wrote over at Lifehacker on how to use the Quick Parts feature in Outlook, reader Jason wrote in asking how you can transfer them to another computer once you’ve created them, and it seemed useful enough to explain for everybody’s benefit.

In case you’ve never seen this feature before, open up a new email in Outlook 2007 and click the Insert tab, then the Quick Parts button, where you can create or use the quick parts.

For more information on how this feature works, you can read my article over at Lifehacker: Save Time and Typing with Outlook 2007’s Quick Parts.

Finding the File For Backup

Open up explorer and then browse to the following folder:

%APPDATA%\Microsoft\Templates

You should see a file named NormalEmail.dotm in this folder, which is what you will need to backup or transfer.

Copy this file to a flash drive, or wherever you would like.

Transferring the File

Find the same directory on the target / restore system and then paste the file in, overwriting the current one. Make sure that you close Outlook or Microsoft Word before doing so, or else you’ll get an error message.

Open up Outlook, and you should see the Quick Parts from your other computer in the list:

While testing I transferred the Quick Parts from my Vista computer over to XP, both running Office 2007.