I personally like it. Of course, the emails that I’ve seen still say what to do if the matter is urgent and needs to be handled now — but as a person who gets 100+ emails a day, whether I tell you I’m deleting all of them when I get back or not — if it is in the thousands of emails that might accumulate in the time I am off, I’m not going to see it or respond. Better that I tell you now that you are going to have to resend the email after I return (or get my backup to handle it now) than you sit around waiting for a response that is never going to come. It is actually pretty common in my industry for any absence two weeks or more.
1) I am currently out at a job interview and will reply to you if I fail to get the position.
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I am on annual leave until [DD/MM/YY]. I will allow each sender one email and if you send me multiple emails, I will randomly delete your emails until there is only one remaining. Choose wisely.
My office has a shared vacation calendar, which I think is a more helpful way to handle this.
You don’t have to stop using OOO messages. Instead, they need to be used wisely. It’s okay to suggest an alternate contact while you are unavailable or add a date when you will be back in action. Just skip the details about why you set up the out of office message. No one needs to know that your son is getting married in Paris. Remove any personal details in that message, including personal cell phone numbers or an alternate email where you can temporarily be reached.
Need inspiration? Here are five out-of-office message examples from the career development site guaranteed to spread holiday cheer professionally:
Did you email me about [SERVICE]? Great! Read what our customers are saying about how awesome their experience has been. [LINK TO TESTIMONIALS]. Best Regards.
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Okay. Before you go into fancyland or funnyland about how you're in the woods protecting yourself against bears, remember Rule 1! Make sure you have all the pertinent details in your out of office message.
If you’re looking for a classic OOO message, this one is for you. Perhaps you work an industry that values directness and getting straight to the point, and playfulness may be off-brand. This response covers all of the most important bits of information every OOO needs: the date you will return to the office, when they can expect a response back, and who to contact in the meantime. That’s it!
When one of my colleagues is out of the office, he doesn't mess around. In fact, he's turned his auto-responses into a running series of commentary from fictional cartoon character Troy McClure.
I can’t remember if this was just an outgoing voice message before routing you to an individual, or for a voicemail, but I remember a fun December phone message from a small company (I think an insurance agency) sung to the tune of a Christmas carol–something like Jingle Bells. The content was something like: you’ve reached our office during this holiday season, hope your holidays are happy, please 1) leave a message or 2) press X for who you want. Other than the tune, it wasn’t overly holiday-centric (for those who don’t celebrate the holidays) and it was cute.
You’ve been busy planning out your tasks, tying up loose ends, and working ahead to ensure you can disconnect, recharge, and relax over your holiday break.
I followed all the steps listed and can’t make this work for my iPhone 6s. Any suggestions?
Mine says something along the lines of “I’m currently away from my desk, and will be back online on Monday, 7 July…” and (if it’s a longer period and not just the next working day) perhaps also something like “If your enquiry is urgent, please resend to…” so someone else can deal with it.
My European colleagues get an extended summer holiday all at the same time, which means we get OOO notes like this:
Crafting an out of office message can be plenty of fun and we're about to show you how with our Mad Libs version!