My favorite OOO to set is something like this: “I’m at sea from X to Y with very limited bandwidth. I’ll reply to urgent emails as soon as possible (but there may be a delay); if you don’t hear back from me by Z, please resend you message.”
For comparison my current (not great) boss sent an out of office recently detailing how he would be out because he was on his personal sail boat all day, sailing from vacation destination X back to our port city. At length. In a pandemic. When we all had our wages frozen at the start of the crisis.
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I’m out of the office from 01.02.2021 until 05.02.2021. During this period I will have no access to my email.
I’ve done this a couple times: on the 3rd sick day when it’s all I can do to just set an OOO, and I’m tired of updating the dates and feel like I’m never going to get better.
Thank them for their email. Even though you're not actually responding to the email, you still need to mind your Ps and Qs. After your greeting, add "Thanks for your email."
Too little info is frankly worse, IMO. All you need for an OOO is date you are coming back, and who to contact in your absence if it can’t wait for your return. If it doesn’t have that, why bother having one at all?
Eh, figuratively. It’s like saying I’ve gone to lunch even though I’m still right here eating at my desk–the point is that I’m unavailable to do any work.
I suppose I’d rather know that and be able to factor it in to my schedule, irritating as it is, than not know and get caught by the month-long delay.
If you need immediate assistance during my absence, please contact (Contacts Name) at (Contacts Email Address). Otherwise, I will respond to your emails as soon as possible upon my return.
A retired small town newspaper guy once told me about the first time the publisher went on vacation and left him in charge (this would have been in the 80s). The publisher told him “Don’t call me unless the building burns down, and even then, don’t call me until the fire is out.” Good example of management setting vacation expectations.
If you’re an events-based business, use your out of office auto-reply as a way to promote your upcoming conferences, sessions, and speakers! Jason here, thanks for reaching out to ThinkTank! I’m currently at a speaking event in Chicago. Find out if I’ll be coming to your city here https://txt.st/PQB
I can’t wait to connect when I return [date]. Until then, please contact [Contact Name] at [contact email] for all urgent matters.
Thank you for your email. Unfortunately, I am currently out of the office and will not return until 3rd November.
They only discovered this AFTER the Christmas rush. Thankfully there were no client meltdowns that year or it could have been a lot worse.
If your message is urgent, fear not — we’ll get it addressed. Try doing one of two things: Send me an email at [email protected]. Just kidding. That’s not a real email address. Reach out to my manager at [email protected] in my absence.
If it’s not that infinite loop of autoreply hell, you get the “I will not be reading or responding to any email sent during this time. Please resend your request after August 1st.” dismissal.
As for this one I think it’s fine for internal particularly if someone can “read it in her voice” and knows she’s quirky but I’d probably just do a short one for external (or none? because I’ve heard there is some kind of security risk with them?)