I’ll get back to you when I return to civilization. Or to an area with WiFi. Or to the office on May 10th. Whichever comes first.
Any correspondence (email or phone calls) sent my way will be responded to within 2–3 days of my return.
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The season of good cheer is upon us and you can feel the anticipation in the air. Most of us will be taking at least some vacation, and we all want to get the most out of our time away. So before you re-post your standard out-of-office reply, stop and ask yourself: will the way you’ve written the message really help you do just that?
The best holiday messages are short, cheerful and specific. Try to include the person’s name, as well as a memory from the holiday season or year.
Thankfully, setting this up in Gmail is easy to do and only takes a few minutes. Here are step-by-step instructions for setting your out-of-office message, plus some helpful examples you can steal for your own use:
© 2020 THE UNIVERSITY OF TOLEDO • 2801 W. Bancroft St. • Toledo, OH 43606 • 800.586.5336
It makes a positive difference when you create auto reply messages that adhere to the basic elements of personalized messages followed with greetings.
The Financial Times and its journalism are subject to a self-regulation regime under the FT Editorial Code of Practice.
Though you were ending with a “for everything else, there’s Mastercard” for a moment!
Thank you for your email. Your credit card has been charged $5.99 for the first ten words and $1.99 for each additional word in your message. This message is automated because until [DATE] because I’m moving to [LOCATION]. That’s right. A cross country road trip from [CITY] to [CITY]. I’ll get back to you when we pull into the driveway.
I find the out of office message from the TikTok video overly cutesy and long winded. It seems like that is the culture at that office, but I would roll my eyes if I got an out of office message like that. Just let me know that you’re gone, when you’ll be back, and who I can contact if I need something before then. I have gotten some out of office messages where it just says the person is out and doesn’t say who to contact instead, which is annoying because I have to contact a lot of third party companies, so it’s not like I just know-oh Jane is out so Fergus is covering. I have to call the other company and try to figure out who can help.
Hope you all are fine and doing well. As we know that the festive season is arriving and we all are looking forward to the holidays. These holidays will allow us all to enjoy the great season and have some amazing time with family and friends. This email is to inform you [all] that the office will be closed for [X] days from [DATE] to [DATE] due to the coming festive season. Our premises will remain closed for normal business from [start date] up to and including [last date]. We will start working on normal days from [DATE] and all the business practices will resume on [re-opening date]. If you have any queries related to the closure period please do not hesitate to contact me. Happy Holidays!
To my mind, it’s just a really bad idea to mass delete stuff that comes in while you’re out. You never know if those emails contain important (though non-actionable) information that you’ll need. You really can’t expect people to resend information like that once you’re back, especially if you were cc’d on something.
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.
Q. Before I leave my office for winter break, are there things I should do to safeguard my work area?
You may also want to include bullet points of what is in progress so that your client knows you’re on top of things. That will also likely reduce the amount of emails sitting in your inbox when you return. Unlike a more generalized email (like the one I’ve provided) that you can send en masse, you’ll want to set aside some time to send more personalized emails out.
An Out of office Message is the autoresponder feature within your email settings that allows you to automatically send a response when an email is sent to a specific email address. Typically, businesses will use the autoresponder feature to confirm receipt of an email and to acknowledge and thank customers for an order that may have been placed.