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.
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Consider also adding a funny GIF or a meme to such an email, some interesting but silly facts, or maybe include a short and harmless joke.
Hi stranger, Sorry I'm unable to reply to your email. I'm off frolicking in the meadows. Please do not contact me until I'm back.
I actually think that’s a really helpful out of office message? I appreciate how clear it is about who to contact in which circumstance (so you’re not having to do the awkward dance of trying to track down the right people while not inconveniencing the wrong ones), while maintaining a friendly-but-firm boundary around the vacationing person’s time (since none of the options include things like “here’s my cell phone number!”).
An out-of-office auto-reply serves to inform people that you aren’t available to respond to their emails. These are mainly used during the holidays.
1. Out of Office Template #1 For the Person Who Works at a Traditional Company. Hello, Thank you for your email, I’m currently offline until [date]. I’ll reply to your message promptly when I return.
“I am spending time with family today – some things are MORE important than work.”
Now, make sure you take care of the additional settings for DND and turn off “Scheduled.” Make sure the phone can set on DND mode “Always,” otherwise you can expect some calls while the phone is not locked, which may ruin your vacation.
Hi, Happy holidays! I am currently out of the office, with no email access. I’ll be returning on [date] and will get back to you as soon as I can. Happy holidays!
Going back to how some people can’t ever switch off, this person went above and beyond for their auto-email with a humorous graph that very accurately shows the highs and lows of stress levels before, during and after time away.
We are encouraged to put up messages that say we have “limited access to email” and alternative contact for things like travel between offices and conferences. We’re technically working those days, but it may be hard to reach us.
22. "Hi, you've reached [your name, the office of X company]. We're closed until [date]. Please leave your name and phone number and someone will return your call ASAP. Have a great [New Year's, Fourth of July, etc.]."
This is the perfect out of office for anyone who just LOVES Christmas. As in, the sort of person who does all their Christmas shopping in September, wears Christmas-related apparel all November and December, and probably single-handedly organised the entire office Christmas party.
“For example, if a hacker knows that the chief financial officer of a company is OOO, thanks to the information in the auto-reply message, an attacker could impersonate the CFO on email and target another individual in the company’s finance team asking them to make a payment or update bank details for them while they are offline,” says Sadler.
Oh, that’s maddening. I just checked Outlook, and it doesn’t look like you can set up a rule not to send OOO replies to a particular person, but you can reply with a template. I wonder if sending just your boss a message that says “Hi boss, this is an automated reply that I set up a rule to send. I’m really out of the office and I really didn’t see this message. See you when I get back on Monday!” or whatever. Probably won’t help, but might be fun.
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.