Send an out-of-office or autoreply email

- [Instructor] When you go on vacation, you probably change the voicemail on your phone telling callers the dates you'll be unavailable to return their calls. You can do the same type of thing with email, and it's called Out of Office. Outlook will auto-respond to anyone that emails you during the dates you'll be away with a message that you specify. It's important to note that this functionality is supported in Outlook only if you're connected to an Exchange or Office 365 account. If you're using POP or IMAP, you can create a message rule to send out a reply to all incoming messages.

However, the Outlook client has to be open and running. I'm using Gmail for IMAP. Gmail has its own vacation responder built right into their web interface, so you should check first with your email provider to make sure they don't already have this functionality. In my Red30 account, however, let's create an Out of Office message. Select File on the top left-hand side of the screen. Make sure you're on the Info tab on the left and then click Automatic Replies. It's going to open up the Automatic Replies dialog box and the first thing you need to do is change to the Send Automatic Replies radio button.

You can specify a time range but you don't have to. Not specifying a time range is a great option for an unmonitored mailbox to send an auto reply back telling senders that it is, in fact, unmonitored. But I'll place a checkbox here to set a date range for when I'm going to be away. I'll choose today through July 8th. I can even choose a start and end time. The automatic replies will reply once for each sender with a message that I specify. I can click inside the body and type my message.

This is the message that everybody inside my organization will see. If I'd like everybody outside of my organization, that is, external email addresses, to see my message, I can create a new one just for them. I'll click the Outside My Organization tab, make sure the Auto Reply button is checked off here, and here's where I can put in a different message. I can have this reply to just my contacts or everybody. When I'm done, I'll click Okay and my Out of Office message will be turned on.

I can click the arrow in the top left-hand side to return to my Inbox. A great thing about the Out of Office message with Exchange is that Outlook doesn't have to be open or running and my computer doesn't have to be turned on for it to work. When I'm back in the office, it will automatically turn itself off after the date that I told it I was returning. However, if I need to turn it off ahead of time or change it for any reason, I can click Turn Off right from this main screen or go back by clicking File, Automatic Replies, and change the date and time.

I'll click Okay. I'm going to turn this off for now. And I'll click the back arrow to get back to my Inbox.