A third alternative (which I prefer to use) is to create a new draft message
with everything you want in place, except for the recipient. That includes
any attachments and all of the text you want to always appear in the
message. When it's the way you want it, Save As Draft. The message will
initially be saved into your Drafts folder, of course, but you can create a
special folder for such messages (I call mine, prosaically enough,
Stationery).
The message just saved has a 'delivery status' of 'unsent'; while it's in
this state it's not yet much good for use as stationery. To accomplish that,
type this script into Script Editor and save it (with an appropriate name:
mine is named Toggle Delivery Status) as a compiled script into your
Entourage Script Menu Items folder:
tell application "Microsoft Entourage"
set themsgs to current messages
if themsgs is {} then return
repeat with amsg in themsgs
if class of amsg is outgoing message then
if delivery status of amsg is sent then
set delivery status of amsg to unsent
else
set delivery status of amsg to sent
end if
end if
end repeat
end tell
Once you have the script ready to use, select the message (or more than one;
don't open the messages, though) and run the script from the Script Menu.
Any selected message that is currently 'unsent' will be marked as being
'sent' (if it's marked as 'sent', it will become 'unsent').
You can now select a "sent" message and then select 'Resend' on the
'Message' menu. A new copy of the message is generated; add recipients(s),
make any desired additions/alterations to the message, then send it. The
original message (untouched, even if you alter the copy) is still available
for future use.
If you need to edit a message for any reason, just select it and run your
'toggle' script. Open the message, make your changes, and Save.
George
There is no 'stationery' feature in Entourage, as you have discovered. There
are two common (but limited) work-rounds for creating mails with standard
boilerplate text - the first is to set up a signature that contains the body
text you require, and select that sig from the list when you want to send
such a mail.
The other (and better, but I'm biased!) method is to use a script I wrote
for the purpose. With this script you can store your commonly used text in
Entourage's notes, assign them the category 'stationery' and then when you
run the script you can choose which block(s) of text you want to add to the
message. The script is to be found here:
<
http://www.scriptbuilders.net/category.php?search=insert+notes>
If you want the stationery to be filled out with a correspondents email
address, I guess that would have to be scripted, maybe with a script that
selects names from a list of common correspondents - but with entourage's
autofill, this is already pretty quick & easy.
If you want to register your desire for proper stationery templates (as many
do), you can send feedback to the developers via the last item in the help
menu 'Send Feedback on Entourage'. This feedback goes directly to the
development team. The more people that request a feature the more chance it
has of being incorporated.
--
Mac Word FAQ: <
http://www.mvps.org/word/FAQs/WordMac/index.html>
Entourage Help Page: <
http://www.entourage.mvps.org/>
Or try Google: <
http://www.google.com>
Please do not reply to this message. Although the email address is perfectly
valid, any replies to this account never get to the Inbox on my computer.
