Home › Career Development › Out of Office Message: Definition, Instructions and Examples What is an out of office message?Why is an out of office message important?How to write an out of office messageOut of office message templatesOut of offices message examples
Yeah, I do think some are pretty funny (eg tan lines) and some are not so terrible, but I honestly think she took them incredibly seriously and wasn’t trying to make her colleagues laugh as much as just ….. put out an air of “look how personable and authentic I am”. She also lamented that other people’s OOOs were “rigid” and why couldn’t people have fun?! Which again, sounds not so bad but was someone who would regularly ask prying inappropriate personal questions, so it came across less like “let’s loosen up” and more like “why won’t people tell me the specifics of why they’re off today, because I deserve to know”.
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@cwarzel I’ve started putting mine up on weekends, and on weekdays after 7pm for internal senders. I’m offline for the night & won’t be checking email, dorks.
I think people still understand that out of office can refer to home office as well. But you could say “unavailable” or “away from work”.
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This used to drive my supervisor crazy, she’d email me “it looks like your OOO is still on.” I had to explain the rationale a few times before she understood.
Thanks for your email. I’m currently offline, returning on [date]. I’ll respond to your message then.
When I’m out for a day or longer, I like to schedule my out of office message to run all the way up until the start time of my day when I return, since we have people who start emailing three hours or earlier before I even get to my desk. If it’s a Monday and I’ve been out for two weeks and they’re emailing me at 6:30am my time, I want people to know that I’ve been out and will be wading through my inbox and might not answer them right away at 10:01 their time like I typically would.
If you scroll down, towards the bottom you'll find a section called Vacation Responder. There, tick Vacation Responder On and fill in the dates for when you want any received emails to be replied to with the automatic response.
I do feel like the person who wrote it may have some issues in their organization with, oh let’s call it fire fighting. People who don’t necessarily think through the process of who would be most effective at dealing with the problem at hand. This reads like the message of someone who is used to getting everything dumped in their email and this OOO is an attempt to manage expectations and distribute issues to the people most able to quickly and effectively deal with a range of problems
It’s really only meant as a courtesy but if your culture is different I can see where it’s eye-roll y.
Thanks so much for your email. I took today off to [rest/relax/travel/spend time with family]. In an effort to come back fully recharged, I won’t be spending today with my phone attached to my hand. (Scary, I know.) Don’t worry, though, because I will be checking in every so often and responding to anything urgent.
How about a little retro concrete poetry – you know, where you arrange your words on the screen to form an image of a palm tree or a pina colada?
Once the person reaching out to you realizes you’re gone, they may panic if they have a legitimate need for immediate support. The best way to avoid this is to let your callers (and emailers) know how to find the appropriate help.
Since holidays occur throughout the year, there is no one ideal time to send a message. For the winter holidays, we recommending sending your well wishes early in December. In general, if you can send your message before people get busy with the holiday, then it will have a larger impact.
Read: Office Closed For Holiday Message Template. Holiday Out Of Office Message. Thanks for your email. I will be out of the office on holiday from [date] to [date]. If you require any urgent assistance while I am away, kindly contact [name] at [email] or [phone number] for questions regarding marketing and [name] at [email] or [phone number