# Confused about E-Mail templates

**URL:** <https://meta.discourse.org/t/confused-about-e-mail-templates/142599>\
**Category:** Product Support\
**Tags:** email\
**Created:** [February 25, 2020, 4:27pm UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/confused-about-e-mail-templates/142599 "2020-02-25T16:27:08Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 1\
**Showing post:** 6

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**Author:** ![DDo](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/meta/user_avatar/meta.discourse.org/ddo/32/142669_2.png) [@DDo](https://meta.discourse.org/u/DDo)\
**Post date:** [March 9, 2020, 8:06am UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/confused-about-e-mail-templates/142599/6 "2020-03-09T08:06:30Z")

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sooo…after quite a while of searching, found that there is no e-mail template for user watching first post, but there are text templates: user\_notifications.user\_watching\_first\_post.subject\_template & user\_notifications.user\_watching\_first\_post.text\_body\_template.

What I don’t understand: If e-mail templates aren’t necessary for notification e-mails, why are there some and some others not?

I don’t get the whole templating thing. There are body templates that use variables like %{topic\_title} and %{topic\_excerpt} etc., but if I copy them into eg. user\_notifications.user\_posted.text\_body\_template, it says they can’t be used.

Are these templates alterable at all? Which variables can be used? Where is the list of usable variables?

I want to alter the e-mail notifications, preferably for one category, so that they don’t send the whole post in the body any more, but would like to give at least the topic. How can I achieve this?

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