Going out of the office soon and want to set an “Out of Office” or “Away” message in Outlook? You would think it would be super easy, but unfortunately it’s not! There are actually two ways of creating an out of office reply and it depends on whether your Outlook is stand-alone or using Microsoft Exchange.
If your are in a corporate environment and Outlook is connected to MS Exchange, then setting an out of office reply is very easy. Let’s go through that method first and then we’ll discuss how to do it if you are not using Exchange.
First go to Tools and click on Out of Office Assistant. Note that this should be there automatically in Outlook 2003 and Outlook 2007 when using Exchange.
Now click on the I am currently out of the office radio box and type in the message into the AutoReplybox.
Go ahead and put the date you will be out till and also put in any contact info in case there is an emergency, etc. And that’s really it! If you click OK, everyone will get this message until you come back to this dialog and change it to I am currently in the office.
You can also add rules to incoming messages while you are out of the office by clicking on Add Rule. This is useful if you want to perform certain actions on emails coming from different people. For example, if you get an email from a client, you may want to forward it to your phone or reply with a different email template than internal employees. If you don’t know how to use rules, read my previous post on how to create Outlook rules.
If you want an action to be performed for all incoming emails, select Sent Directly to me, otherwise click the From button and add in the contacts you want to apply the rules to.
So this is great if you have Outlook with Exchange right, but what if you don’t see this Out of Office Assistant option under Tools, then what? Well there is a way you can EMULATE the out of office assistant by creating a automatic reply rule along with a out of office template. Here’s what you need to do…
Step 1: First create a new message in Outlook as if you are going to write someone an email. Do no put anything in the TO or CC box. Make sure to click on the Options tab and choose Plain Text.
Type in your away email message and put in a subject also. Click on the Microsoft Office button and chooseSave As. In the Save as type combo box, select Outlook Template. Type a name such as Out Of Office Reply in the File Name box and click Save.
Step 2: Now all we need to do is create the rule and tell it to use the new email template we just created. On the Tools menu, go to Rules and Alerts.
Click on New Rule under Email Rules to create a new Outlook rule.
Under the section Start from a blank rule, go ahead and click on Check messages when they arrive and click Next.
Under Conditions, check the box that says “Sent only to me” and click Next.
Under Actions, check the box that says “Reply using a specific template” and then in the second text box at the bottom, click on the link that says a specific template.
Now select the template that you had created earlier from the list of templates. If you do not see your template, click on the Look In combo box and choose Use Templates in File System.
Click Open and then click Finish. Now whenever you get a new email, an automatic response will be sent using your template. Outlook remember who it sends the messages to and will only send it to once to each email address.
To turn it off, you have to go back into Rules and Alerts and un-check the box next to the rule. Also, you have to make sure that Outlook is open on your computer before you leave in order for it to send the auto replies! Also, check out my previous posts on how to export contacts from Outlook easily and how tobackup your Outlook and Outlook Express email. Enjoy!
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