How to Add Canned Responses in Gmail

Sometimes the task of emailing gets redundant. You may have to send the same email to a number of different recipients. A possible solution to this problem is to copy and paste the message and then send it. But then it still requires some manual work like opening the file where the message is stored, copy and then paste it in the message. Wouldn’t it be great if we can create a canned response in Gmail so that we do not have to type that same message again and again. The good news is that this is possible and you can save canned responses in Gmail and use them with a single click.

There’s no need to type that same reply every time. Instead, save the reply that you want to send. This is known as canned response. If you have carefully observed replies of support tickets, many times they are canned responses which means that support staff do not type that long message every time, instead they just send us a canned response which was written once and saved so that it can be sent later. The same functionality can be achieved in Gmail.

How to Add Canned Responses in Gmail

1. Login to your Gmail or Google Apps account, click on Gear icon from top right side and then click on Labs
2. This will open Labs. Search for “canned” and you will see a result with the name of Canned Responses. Select Enable from there and then click on Save Changes.

   

3. Go to Compose to start composing a new message. Type the message and then click on “canned responses”. Since we want to save the message, click on New canned response. Enter a name for this canned reply and then click on OK. You can skip adding Subject: and To: fields as these fields are not saved with the message template.

   

4. Now that you have saved a canned response (also known as email template) its time to see how to insert this response in an email. To do this, click on “canned response” and then from “Insert” section, click on the name of canned response. You need to observe this section carefully as now you can see three different sections – Insert, Save and Delete. The insert section will insert your saved response to the email, save section will save the response written in the current email (and also overwrite previously saved response) and from delete section you can delete a canned response.

   

Inserting email templates in Gmail is this easy. Just enable canned responses from Labs and start using it. The process is very simple to create a new canned response and also editing, deleting and sending the response is very easy. Everything can be done from the “compose” section of Gmail.

If you are too busy replying to tons of messages in Gmail, then this experimental labs feature will definitely help you. You can also save time by using this feature by sending replies of emails in a breeze.