ContentsHow to Set Up an Out of Office Reply in the Outlook Desktop AppHow to Set Up Out of Office Replies in the Microsoft Outlook Web Version
I do this when I’m on personal vacations. When I’m doing field work for research, I do tend to add a statement that I won’t have access to email/phone because I’m doing field work in X location.
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I also think you should give this email tactic a try – especially when you return from an extended break or vacation.
This seems like information that would be better in an email signature than an OOO, really. That’s how my organisation does it.
An away message will generally be a 160-character auto-reply message that can be turned on or off as needed.
I am not able to set OOO messages at all. Most of the people who are contacting me do so through custom aliases that then come to our team, who each handles specifics. Even if I’m out someone else is available, but I can’t know who is supposed to handle that specific email to be able to redirect without naming everyone, and then confusing things more when Client A gets the same reply as Client B but one needs to go to teammate C and the other to teammates D & E. Then to make just that bit more complicated, there are the clients who think that going around the system to email the teammates directly at our personal email addresses is better but pitch a hissy when we’re OOO but they didn’t get a notice? I just set rules to forward those.
The boss’s thinking was that people who did drivebys looking for you would then email you, see your OOO, and then be able to call you to talk about whatever they were driving by for. No one liked putting their personal contact info so we never worked from home (pre-COVID and pre-VOIP implementation) or told people to IM us and we’d call them.
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Amen. I have a co-worker who’s out of office message is always “spending time with my kiddos.” I don’t care. Just tell me who to contact and/or when you’ll be back.
By providing this information for anyone who tries to contact you, it ensures important emails don’t go unnoticed or ignored.
My trick though is to leave the out of office on for the first day after I return so folks know to expect delays while I get caught up/triage my inbox. Works for my company.
I’m guilty of the “pre-vacation warmip” email…but I send it on Wednesday so Last-minute Louie can contact me before I go out on Friday. (And it’s not all-office!)
I think important context here is that no matter what the details added were, it always had this aggressive tone of “I’m taking a break and breaks are IMPORTANT”. Which I agree with, but it felt like it was almost aggressive/accusatory, and more importantly: this person was without a doubt the meanest, cruelest, least understanding and empathetic person I’ve ever worked with who ran her staff into the ground with urgent demands and expectations.
Half of the auto-replies I get are for very specific chunks of time. Like, if you are out of the office for three hours I don’t need to know, dude.
That 15minute breaktime message screams “past experience with a toxic company” to me.
Click the cog and select ‘Automatic replies’Select ‘Send automatic replies’Specify a time periodWrite your out of office emailConfirm other details and press ‘OK’
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