Don’t stress about what to say in your out-of-office messages. Keep it simple, concise, and the people reaching out to you will know exactly what to do or when they’ll hear from you. And, most importantly, enjoy your time off! By Erin Ollila / May 16th, 2021 / Categories: Professional Development / Tags: holidays, out-of-office, time off, vacation, work, work from home, work life balance
23. "Happy holidays! [I'm, the team at X company is] away until [date]. We'll make sure to call you back straight away when we return. If your request is urgent, email [emergency contact] at [email address]. Thanks, and have a wonderful day."
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I agree. I think this one is way too long and comes off as trying to be too cute.
1. Sign in to Outlook.com. 2. Click the gear icon on the upper right corner beside your name. 3. Select More mail settings. 4. Under Managing your account click Sending automated vacation replies. 5. Enter the message you'd like to send while you're away.
3.) Herzlich willkommen bei der Mustermann AG. Unsere Büros in Berlin sind heute wegen einem Feiertag geschlossen. Sie erreichen uns an Werktagen jeweils von Montag bis Freitag von 9 bis 12 und von 13 bis 18 Uhr. Für allgemeine Anfragen können Sie uns auch eine E-Mail an [email protected] senden. Besten Dank. Wir wünschen Ihnen einen schönen Tag – ihre Mustermann AG.
That’s just sloppy. We always check who will be available, because usually someone is. We also have a service address, and usually use that for OOO–messages. Then the ones working are responsible for those messages. That said, in my branch nobody seriously awaits an answer in July, but I’m in academica.
“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.”
Well, on the one hand, it’s rude, on the other hand, odds are at least fairly high that the person ended up having to reach out to someone else to get it done. Or that it’ll take the person another week or two just to find their problem in a thousand emails that came in while they were on vacation.
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.
If your request is urgent, please send your request to [contact name] at [contact email].
Not me, but a friend of mine once received an OOO that simply said “I am having an out-of-office experience.”
As a result, our text-based work communication has morphed into a series of strange, stilted, passive aggressive, and performatively upbeat exchanges. Much of the actual text of work email exchanges is ornamental filler language filled with exclamation points and phrases like “just looping back on this” that mask burnout, frustrated obligation, and sometimes outright contempt (the absolute best example of this is a wonderful 2015 post titled, “Just Checking In,” where writers Virginia Heffernan and Paul Ford write fake emails in this vein to see who can cause the other the most panic).
If this matter isn’t time-sensitive, rest assured that I’ll respond when I’m back in the office. But, if this is an urgent request, please resend any messages that require my immediate attention with a subject line of “URGENT: [Original Subject]”.
If you require immediate assistance, please email [email protected] in my absence. Thanks.
6. Maternity leave out of office template. Taking maternal leave, and indeed any parental leave, often means more time off work than standard annual leave.
Setting up an out of office message in Gmail is simple. First, (1) put the message you wrote in the text box and format it properly. Then (2) choose a schedule for your auto-replies. If you know by which date you’re going to get back to the office, you can put that day in. Gmail will then automatically stop sending out auto-replies when the time comes. If you don’t know when you’re going to return you can leave it empty. Out of office replies can also be (3) manually toggled on or off at any time.
Don’t be afraid to use a pop cultural reference that the audience would recognize. Instead of bemoaning your absence, they’ll have something fun and familiar to laugh at.