Thank you for your email. I’m away from my desk until [return date] trying to corral my kids between family visits and holiday sugar highs.
According to The Washington Post’s self-reported survey of more than 1,000 white-collar workers, “we spend an average of 4.1 hours checking our work email each day.” That’s over 1,000 hours each year. The holidays are the perfect time to temporarily break up with your email inbox for a digital detox. Before you stress about crafting the perfect out of the office message, check out our sample templates. From professionally festive to holiday humor, we know you’ll be ready to copy, paste, and fully embrace the holiday season.
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If you centre-align that it resembles a Christmas tree, and I coloured the font accordingly :D
I’m so glad not to have to work at [insert company] any more that I am literally high on life.
On that same day, President Eisenhower sent a letter to the Honorable Harvey V. Higley, Administrator of Veterans' Affairs (VA), designating him as Chairman of the Veterans Day National Committee.
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But the bottom line is, unplug as much as you possibly can. You’ll get more benefit from your time away and return relaxed, recharged and ready to take on the New Year with extra energy.
If you are re-using the existing message from the past, make sure you update the dates so that your clients know when you will be available again. For a general out-of-office message, it is vital to include the office timings.
The one that gave a personal cellphone number (they didn’t have a company phone or were required to use it for work) while out on vacation, with a comment like “I’m out on vacation from date x to date y and in my absence please contact Jane Smith but if you don’t get any joy please call my personal number if it’s urgent”.
Like, I don’t feel confident enough to do it myself, but the OOO writer is probably a known Quirky Person and I admire that to an extent.
I’m currently out of the office, enjoying some peanuts and Cracker Jacks with my family. Can you guess where I am? That’s okay, you’re busy.
But that sounds boring, right? Luckily, there are ways to spice up your OOO message by adding humor in just the right places.
Thanks for your email. I’m currently on holiday with my family for the first time in what seems like forever. For urgent matters, [NAME] will help you. She doesn’t have a cape, but she is basically Superwoman. See you real soon.
I think it’s irritating and condescending and could have been funny if only one of the goofy elements was incorporated, instead of trying to make a cohesive comedy bit. It seems like the points should be reversed. Most urgent to least urgent. If I have a truly urgent issue I don’t want to read through that I should ask myself if it’s important and urgent. If it’s something that can wait, I’ll just expect a delay. If it’s not important or at least worth communicating, I wouldn’t be sending the email.
Education Details: If there is a way for the recipient to discover your address, you simply use a general template, like the one you have presented, or the all-purpose out of office message from the article. Still, I cannot imagine using a home landline number in an OOF message …
Read our guide to setting up email on a Mac, iPhone and iPad here. Plus how to send email attachments in Mail on iPhone.
I mean, this is what I pretty much did upon returning from my maternity leaves but I would never put it into an email! My maternity leave OOO was the vague “I am on extended leave and am not anticipated to return until X. Please contact Joe or Fergus in my absence.” X being a vague time-frame based on my due date and the length of my leave. No one is waiting 3+ months for an answer so I did get to delete most of the 500 emails I got during my most recent leave! I did once have someone internal tell me I should say maternity leave rather than leave, but really, what does it matter? I’m gone for a few months and no one outside of the company really NEEDS to know why.