Read our guide to setting up email on a Mac, iPhone and iPad here. Plus how to send email attachments in Mail on iPhone.
First things first: let’s go over the basics of an OOO email. In your away message, you typically include the following: A quick “I’m out of the office” phrase. The date or time range you’ll be out. Who to reach out to in case the sender needs immediate attention. A sign-off.
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Something like, “I will not have access to email while I am out and will get back to you when I return. If your issue is urgent, please resend your email after X date,” would be… more polite, I guess.
I’ll return on [date] or after I watch [favorite holiday movie] one too many times (whichever comes first)—and will respond to your message at that time.
Thank you for emailing me. I am currently out of the office, with no email access. I will be returning on [DATE]. If you need immediate assistance before then, you may reach me at my mobile [PHONE]. Kind Regards.
When you’ve finally powered your way through that seemingly endless to-do list and are ready to check out of work mode once and for all, there’s one final thing you need to take care of: setting your out-of-office response.
“Depending on your company culture or your potential audience, you can craft a professional message or take a funny, creative approach,” according to Indeed.com.
Dear Customer, Our office will be closed from [date] until [date] and close again for December and January to welcome the New Year. We wish you the warmest holiday. Regards, [Company name]
It's not pure altruism though, as the company explained when the policy was launched: "The aim of the project is to maintain the balance between the work and home life of Daimler employees so as to safeguard their performance in the long run."
Should the matter be important, please contact Jim Ross ([email protected]) in my absence. Kind regards.
4. Out of Office Template #4 For the Person Who Will Be 100% Out of Reach. Hello, Thanks for your email. I’m currently offline, returning on [date]. I’ll respond to your message then.
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But what if you’re only taking off one day? Sometimes, it might seem silly to bother with an out-of-office for such a short amount of time–especially if it’s a day that a lot of other people are taking off (such as a national holiday). If people do need you to get back to them urgently, they’ll think they’re being ignored. (Even if you define “urgently” differently.) And if there’s a chance of an emergency landing in your inbox, it’ll be that much harder for you to unplug because you’ll just keep “checking in.”
The tone of your out-of-office auto-reply may vary depending on the intended recipient of your email.
“The world is serious enough as it is - people need, and usually appreciate, an unexpected moment of levity in their day,” he says, when quizzed about how recipients might respond to such an OOO. He also confides that he himself has dispensed with auto responses altogether – though not for idealistic reasons. “The last time I tried to set one up, I botched it so badly that somehow it resent every single email in my outbox from the previous year - client emails, firing notices, literally thousands of emails.”
At my current workplace, I got an OOO about someone being on sabbatical and off driving a vintage VW bus. Loved that one. But also got one about someone bringing a tiny human into the world – that was a weird overshare.
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