The short version
What Microsoft actually means by Microsoft Loop templates
If you arrived here expecting a page of files to download, it is worth resetting the frame first, because Microsoft Loop templates work nothing like the OneNote, Word or Excel templates you have bought before. Loop is built from three things, and Microsoft defines all three plainly. A component is a “portable piece of content that stays in sync across all the places it is shared”. A page is a “flexible canvas” where you gather components, links, tasks and data. A workspace is a “shared space” that holds everything for one project (Microsoft Support, checked August 2026).
A template, in that world, is a starting shape for a page. You open a new blank page, pick something from the Template Gallery inside the app, and the page arrives with headings, a table or a task list already in place rather than empty. That is the whole mechanism. There is no import step, no install guide and no file sitting in your downloads folder, which is exactly why the phrase trips people up.
The second route is the one most teams end up using. Build a page the way you want it once, then, in Microsoft’s words, “select More Page options and then choose Save page as template”. The page “is now saved as a template in the Template Gallery” and sits alongside the built-in ones. For a recurring meeting, a client intake or a project kickoff, that is usually a better fit than anything shipped with the app, because it already carries your headings and your language.
The catch
A Loop template lives inside one workspace, and stays there
This is the sentence that should decide how much time you spend on any of this. Microsoft’s own documentation for saving a page as a template says the template “is saved in the workspace where it was created and can only be accessed by members of that workspace” (checked August 2026). Read that twice if you are used to notebooks and documents, because it removes almost everything you would normally do with a template.
You cannot send it to a colleague in another team. You cannot keep a personal library of shapes and reuse them across projects. You cannot buy one from anybody, and nobody can sell you one, because there is no artefact to hand over. If you spin up a second workspace next quarter, the templates you built this quarter do not follow you into it; you rebuild them or you copy the pages across by hand. Every other template we work with is a file that outlives the place it was made. A Loop template is a fixture of one room.
What exists
There is no public gallery to browse before you commit
Microsoft has a public template site, and for Word, Excel and PowerPoint it is generous. Loop is not on it. The address you would expect, the Loop templates page on Microsoft’s create site, answers with a redirect to the Loop product page instead of a gallery (checked August 2026). So the only way to see what ships with the app is to open the app, which is a small thing that has a real consequence: you cannot evaluate the templates before you decide whether the tool is worth adopting.
That also explains why the roundups of Microsoft Loop templates you find elsewhere read the way they do. They are people describing what they saw on their own screen, which is fair enough, and it is why we are not repeating a list of built-in template names here. We have not opened that gallery, and a name we have not seen is a claim we cannot stand behind.
Access is the other half of the picture. Microsoft states that “the Microsoft Loop app is available to everyone with a work or school account”. A personal Microsoft account gets you into the app, but with edges: “Loop components are not yet supported in Teams, Outlook, or other apps when used with a personal Microsoft account”, and on the AI side, “Copilot isn’t available in Loop for personal Microsoft accounts”, and Microsoft is explicit that the consumer subscriptions, Personal and Family among them, “won’t enable any Copilot features in Loop”. A Copilot for Microsoft 365 plan is what turns those on. Two more details worth knowing before you move anything important in: personal workspaces need “an active OneDrive site or OneDrive creation policy”, and since 25 June 2024 Loop workspaces and pages count towards your Microsoft storage quota (all checked August 2026).
Build your own
Making Microsoft Loop templates worth keeping
Given all of that, the sensible move is to treat the gallery as scaffolding and build the two or three shapes your team actually repeats. Start from a page you have already used in anger rather than one you designed in the abstract, because the headings that survived three real meetings are the ones worth freezing. Strip the content out, leave the structure, save it as a template, and let the workspace accumulate a small set rather than a long one.
One habit transfers directly from OneNote, and it is the one people get wrong. In OneNote, Microsoft documents that a template applies only to a page with no notes on it, so you create the page from the template first and paste your content in afterwards, never the other way round. Practitioners writing about Loop report the same behaviour there, that a page template goes onto a blank page and not onto one you have started typing into. Microsoft does not document that for Loop, so treat it as a working assumption rather than a rule, but the habit costs nothing: pick the shape before you fill it.
Every other template we work with is a file that outlives the place it was made. A Loop template is a fixture of one room.
Next to OneNote
Where Loop sits beside OneNote, and where it does not
The two are less rival than they look. Loop is built for the live surface, the thing several people edit in the same hour, and its components are designed to be dropped into other Microsoft apps and stay in sync wherever they land. OneNote is built for the record, the notebook that still makes sense when you open it a year later, and it is the app you own outright once a notebook is in your account. A workspace and a notebook answer different questions, and plenty of teams run both.
Where the difference bites is the one this whole post has been circling. If what you want is a structure you can install, hand to somebody, reuse next year and carry between accounts, Loop is the wrong shape for it and OneNote is the right one. If what you want is a shared page three people are typing into on a Tuesday, that argument runs the other way. Our comparison of the best note-taking app options weighs that up in more detail, and if you are deciding how much of the Microsoft AI story matters here, Copilot in OneNote covers the sibling case.
The verdict
Is it worth setting up templates in Loop yet
If your team already lives in Loop and you have a meeting or a project kickoff that recurs, yes, and it takes about ten minutes. Save the page you already use, name it clearly, and stop there. The return is real and the effort is small.
If you are considering Loop because you want a template system, no, or at least not for that reason. The workspace boundary means you would be building something that cannot travel, and you cannot inspect the built-in gallery before committing. Adopt Loop because live co-editing solves a problem you have, and treat the templates as a convenience you get afterwards rather than the thing you came for. That is a smaller claim than most pages on this topic make, and it is the one the documentation supports.
Loop is also young, and the workspace limit is the kind of constraint that tends to loosen. We will revisit this when it does. If you have built something in Loop that earned its place, or found a way around the workspace boundary that does not involve copying pages by hand, tell us in the comments, because that is the question everyone writing about Microsoft Loop templates is quietly stuck on. The OneNote hub indexes the rest of our Microsoft work, and the OneNote templates guide is the closest neighbour to this one.
FAQ
Common questions, answered briefly
Can you download Microsoft Loop templates?
How do you save a Loop page as a template?
Do you need a paid plan to use Microsoft Loop?
Can you share a Loop template with another workspace?
If yours isn’t above, drop the question in the comments and we’ll add it.
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